Democratic Small Business Agenda
Floor Speech
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Mr. TONKO. Thank you, Representative Dahlkemper. And it is a pleasure to hear both Congressmen from Michigan and California and you as a Representative from Pennsylvania all speaking the voice of the freshman class. I'm so enthused to work with all of us as freshman Members of this Congress. We have brought, I believe, a lot of thought, a lot of energy, a lot of vision; and we are attaching it to the leadership of this
House, which is broken from some of the failed attempts from the prior administration.
The entire focus on manufacturing through the MEP program was denied. There wasn't a respect shown, I believe, strong enough toward the manufacturing sector. And the American manufacturing sector is alive. It will be competitive on the global scene because it can do it smarter, and the investment of that intellectual capacity of this Nation gives us great promise with the manufacturing sector.
So to hear of all these ideas, from tax benefits that will go toward creating small business opportunities, to dealing with the credit crunch, making certain that we raise the loan opportunities to allow for the working capital needs to be met for our small business community, those are important aspects. Those are great factors.
H.R. 4598, which you are sponsoring, Congresswoman, is tremendous benefit to the opportunities to invest in small business, and they are the backbone of this American economy.
To the gentleman from California, when he spoke of health care, I talked to a number of small businesses that might have five, 10, 15 employees. And when they are insuring their employees for health care purposes, they are looking over a rather small base. And the bill that we are looking at before the House allows for an exchange to be developed where there is a large pool of employees, where there is going to be a regulatory environment to hold down those costs. And beyond that, if you have one employee of five or 10 impacted with catastrophic illness, you're probably going to see rate increases in your insurance rise exponentially. When you put them into a larger sea of employees, by operating through these exchanges, that's the kind of reform that is responding to the needs of small business.
We talked about it today in my office. People understand that concept. You put people's situations into a large audience, and it neutralizes the outcome in a way that spreads the pain and allows small business to continue to provide for their employees, which they want to do. We have decided in this country we are going to stay with an employer-based health care system. So let's provide the reforms that allow small business to have the benefit in that outcome. If we profess small business to be the vision of the future, to be the job growth market, certainly we have seen it in the last decade or two, 75 to 85 percent of all the new jobs created are coming through small business.
So let's be there in a user-friendly way that allows them to provide for their employees so that they have a healthy and strong workforce so that we can put together both the physical health care, mental health care concepts that will enable them to prosper, put together the funding opportunities dealing with that credit crunch. We saw what happened. The banks were not regulated. We saw the institutions out there collapse. It killed the American economy and the global economy. And the credit lines were dried up. They were exhausted for households and businesses. That is not good.
So now it is our challenge as Democrats to respond; and, I think, in many dimensions we are responding. We are going to open those credit lines. We are going to provide for that capital need to be met for the business community. We are responding. And people need to know that it's a full agenda from a jobs package to health care reform to energy reform, which is growing a clean energy economy, an innovation economy. These are the concepts that are going to provide the change that was long overdue and utilize the American know-how, the great pioneer spirit.
I represent a host of communities, a necklace as I like to refer to it, of mill towns. They were the epicenters of invention and innovation. That spirit still prevails in this country today. And we need to foster that kind of growth. We need to grow out of this recession, now that we have stopped the bleeding, and build this economy the way we envision it to be the most powerful, with small business at the front and center of that.
Mrs. DAHLKEMPER. I'm sure as the gentleman goes around his district, as my other colleagues do, and visits our small businesses, we see the innovation. It is exciting to go visit those small businesses in our region who are really doing some very amazing and innovative work.
Again, we have a robust and strategic agenda, the Democrats. And we have got to continue to work on this as we want to continue to help our small businesses. I think we have got a lot of good pieces in place and, as Mr. Peters brought up, even more things that we are bringing forward.
I would like to yield again to the gentleman from California.
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