Small Business Early-Stage Investment Act Of 2009

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRAVES. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, today I rise in support of the request to suspend the rules and pass H.R. 3738, a bill to provide early stage seed-capital financing for small businesses, and I would like to thank Chairwoman Velázquez for working in a cooperative and bipartisan manner to bring this bill to the House floor today.

As I mentioned in a recent floor statement, America needs to stop exporting risk and restart making products that the world desires. Those products are most likely to come from the minds of America's entrepreneurs in such fields as value-added agriculture, biotechnology, renewable energy, and computer software. Nevertheless, startups in these fields are finding it increasingly difficult to find financing. If these enterprises have to rely on expensive debt capital, it will detract from their ability to expand their businesses.

The SBA used to have a program designed to help provide long-term equity capital to start up small businesses. However, this program was overly complex and forced potential participants to wade through a lengthy, maze-like application process.

The bill before us today, H.R. 3738, provides a streamlined process to enable qualified venture capitalists to bootstrap their investment with additional Federal moneys to provide needed equity capital to small businesses. Successful operators will pay back the Federal Government before they take their own profits.

While there is a modest cost to the program, the potential benefits to the economy are quite significant. Some of the best known names in American businesses, including companies like Federal Express, Dell, Intel, Nike, Callaway Golf and Build-A-Bear received assistance through the use of long term equity capital. If H.R. 3738 creates a new Intel, it would certainly pay for itself. More importantly, the program will help America's entrepreneurs, the individual risk-takers who had an idea, and that is what made this country great.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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