Providing For Consideration of H.R. 5486, Small Business Jobs Tax Relief Act of 2010; And Providing for Consideration of H.R. 5297, Small Business Lending Fund Act of 2010

Floor Speech

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Ms. PINGREE of Maine. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 1436 provides for consideration of H.R. 5297, the Small Business Lending Fund Act of 2010, under a structured rule, with 1 hour of general debate with 30 minutes controlled by the Committee on Financial Services and 30 minutes controlled by the Committee on Small Business.

The rule makes in order an amendment in the nature of a substitute consisting of the text of H.R. 5297, as reported by the Committee on Financial Services, with the addition of Title 3, which would establish at the Small Business Administration a program to provide equity financing to support early-stage and high-growth small businesses. It also includes a manager's amendment which makes a number of important changes to the base text.

The rule makes in order 17 amendments, which are printed in part C of the Rules Committee report accompanying the rule. The amendments are each debatable for 10 minutes. The rule provides one motion to recommit H.R. 5297, with or without instructions.

The rule also provides for consideration of H.R. 5486, the Small Business Jobs Tax Relief Act of 2010, under a closed rule. The rule provides 1 hour of debate controlled by the Committee on Ways and Means.

In addition to paying for the cost of the Small Business Lending Fund Act, it will provide a number of important tax breaks to our Nation's struggling small businesses.

The rule also provides one motion to recommit H.R. 5486, with or without instructions. The rule then provides that these two bills will be combined upon adoption before being sent to the Senate.

Additionally, the rule waives clause 6(a) of rule XIII, which would allow for same-day consideration through Friday, June 18, of a rule providing for consideration of any Senate amendment to H.R. 4213, the Americans Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act of 2010.

Finally, the rule also allows the Speaker to entertain motions to suspend the rules through June 18.

Mr. Speaker, today, the House will take up two very important pieces of legislation that will directly help small businesses around the country. These bills will provide much needed support for the small businesses that make up our communities and are the backbone of our economy and our economic recovery. These bills will help small entrepreneurs grow and create jobs. As President Obama said last fall, supporting small businesses needs to be our highest priority because ``when small businesses are succeeding, America succeeds.''

In order for small businesses to succeed, we must give them the tools they need to grow. One of these tools is the ability to access capital.

When I go back to Maine each week, I hear often the same story from business owners across the State. When the credit market dried up, they were hit hard. Now as the economy has started to make a recovery, they are still unable to access the credit they need to expand, rehire, and grow. About a year ago, I hosted an event focusing on helping connect small businesses with capital. The response was overwhelming. Hundreds of small business owners showed up, in fact, so many that we need an overflow room to accommodate the demand. There were businesses of all types and sizes, and many of these small business owners had driven hours to come to the workshop. They came to this meeting because they felt they had nowhere else to turn.

As a small business owner myself, I know what a challenge it can be to make ends meet. When I started my last business before the credit crunch, I was fortunate that I had a small community bank to work with that gave me access to capital I needed to start my business. But for many who have tried to get the money necessary to start, operate, and expand a business over the past few years, it hasn't been so easy. Today, we have an opportunity to make credit available to millions of small businesses across the country.

Today, we can assist the small lenders who know firsthand the difference those businesses make to a community. Today, we can make it easier for companies to get access to the financing that will help them grow, expand, and create jobs. The Congressional Research Service estimates that the investments made by this bill will stimulate $300 billion of lending to small businesses.

Small business owners and bankers alike have told me they think this bill is a good idea. As the economy recovers, it will help increase lending by our local financial institutions in Maine. As the owner of Rumery's boatyard, a small boatyard in Saco, Maine, told me, it is imperative that we support our small businesses and ensure that they are ``ready to go once the economy fully recovers.'' The folks at Rumery's make a good point.

Although we are now seeing signs of economic recovery, economists tell us that we could still face a double-dip recession if we aren't careful. Without access to capital, I'm afraid the recovery will be limited to Wall Street and not Main Street. By investing in small businesses, we can keep the momentum going and make sure the economic recovery turns into jobs for people in my State and across the country.

Mr. Speaker, let me tell you a little bit more about what I've heard from the people who live in my State. One person in my district who helps small business owners told me recently that he is ``convinced that the inability of small businesses to access capital is the number one impediment to economic growth for our Nation.'' He also said that he works with ``successful entrepreneurs who survived the recession but are having a difficult time reestablishing their credit lines or accessing money for growth even when they have real, profitable opportunities. The banks are not necessarily lending unless you have hard collateral, and they are shutting down credit lines to customers who pay their bills on time.''

For example, over the past 17 years, one small manufacturing company in Cornish, Maine, has grown from a sole proprietorship to employing 17 people. They have borrowed money to invest heavily in the machinery and

technology necessary to produce a high-quality product. But as the economy stalled out, they were facing a shortfall in receipts and needed to refinance, but have been struggling to find the capital they need. They are continuing to provide jobs and ship product all over the world and pay for their operating costs of doing their business. If they had access to capital, they could also continue to make innovative new designs. Demand for their product is increasing daily, and without financing, they are unable to grow their company and provide new jobs.

Small businesses are desperate for credit to expand and to grow. And that's why this bill is so important. As the economy picks up, small businesses in Maine and elsewhere in this country need to have the capital to expand and grow their businesses. Without access to capital, these businesses will not be able to grow. I look forward to supporting this important legislation later today.

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

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Ms. PINGREE of Maine. Mr. Speaker, my colleague from North Carolina has talked a little bit about the content of this bill, and I know it will be debated at great length after we have finished the debate on this rule. But I just want to mention a couple of points from my perspective, why I am here supporting this bill today, and why I somewhat disagree on her notion that we're just doing the same thing over and over again. I am not actually doing the same thing over and over again. I am a freshman Member of Congress. Unlike my colleague, I wasn't here last year.

When the President from the former administration, President Bush, proposed the TARP to Congress, many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle actually voted in favor of that bailout of Wall Street. Many believed it was critical to reviving our economy, just as I believed it was critical to support the Recovery Act to make sure that we did, yes, in fact, send a considerable amount of money back into our home districts, whether it was for infrastructure construction or to shore up the jobs of our teachers and firefighters, to make sure that we were continuing to build projects in our own districts, continuing to make sure that we supported our education system.

I am pleased to see that the economy is making some improvement. Now, I would be the first to say it's not improving fast enough, the jobs aren't growing fast enough in my home district. We have lost too much in our manufacturing segment. We have given too many jobs away in offshoring, and we have done so many things over the last two decades, I believe, in this country that has hurt our fundamental economy.

But I will say that what I think is different about what we are doing today and what made me very pleased when I first heard the President announce this is we are finally looking after some of our small businesses. For my year and a half in Congress, as I mentioned before, I have been meeting with small businesses, meeting with the bankers that loaned them money, holding a workshop, as I did around access to capital. I was floored with the number of people who came to that workshop, with people who drove from all over my State, even outside of my district, because they were so desperate to make sure they got more information about how to access that difficult capital, whether it was someone who was ready to start a small business, even in a tough economy; or it was someone who said to me, You know, I want to do a little expansion. I want to build my own infrastructure here while I have the opportunity, or I am just trying to survive long enough until the economy improves so my business can still be there when, I hope, things get better.

Well, I desperately hope things get better. In my home State of Maine, frankly, we hope for a very sunny summer. We hope that the tourists will be busy in our State, that the lobster fishermen will harvest a lot of lobster, that all of you will come and stay in our hotels, eat our wonderful seafood, and spend a little bit of time, maybe even purchase some real estate and build a new home. For us, that is critical. For many of our small businesses, who I hear from regularly, they still can't find the capital that they need.

We have a huge boat-building industry in our State, and we have met with the boat builders who say, The floor plan lending proposal and what we are able to access through the Small Business Administration isn't enough. Our banks aren't able to access enough capital. We sit down and meet with those very bankers that you mentioned. We meet with those bankers, many of whom are on solid footing, who give good loans to people with good credit, but they say to me, You know, we wish the SBA had a little bit more.

When you talk about the sort of government programs that don't do us any good, I just want to remind us, we are talking about the Small Business Administration. My guess is that there are a lot of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who are very happy to go to the ribbon-cutting when a new business is opening, backed by a loan guarantee from the Small Business Administration. I am very confident that many of you meet with your bankers, and you hear your bankers say, I wish we could just access a little bit more of that support from the SBA. My guess is that many of you, while you are proclaiming that this is some kind of Democratic left-wing liberal agenda, are happy to go back to your districts and say, We want a little more SBA lending. We want to make it a little bit easier for businesses to thrive and flourish.

And somehow you get down here and this turns into a left-wing Democratic agenda because you are not interested in voting for it today. I have to say, sometimes I am completely confounded about exactly which party I am in. I feel pretty much like I am in the party of common sense. Like we are listening to our constituents, our small businesses, who everybody proudly proclaims is the backbone of the American economy. In my State, it is the backbone of our economy. We listen to them, and they say, We are still having a little trouble accessing the capital.

The President comes before us and he says, let us make sure that $30 billion goes to small business, not just Wall Street and big business, let's not just bail out the big banks, as was done under the Bush administration, let's direct this very money to our small businesses who have been asking for this for a year and a half.

I, frankly, am confounded about why anyone would vote against this, why anyone would say ``no'' to small businesses, why anybody would believe that this economic recession is over, that it is okay to just walk away and use all kinds of excuses about why you don't feel like voting for something anymore, why you don't want to continue helping our struggling businesses, why you don't want to continue to build jobs in this country. That is what people are desperately asking us to do, and it is my belief if we stop too soon, if we don't help our small businesses, frankly if we don't help our States that are struggling, that have loan guarantee programs themselves who have done an excellent job supporting businesses and economic growth, if we are not there to say to those entrepreneurs who have a good idea today, or who are already in business and want to expand with a creative new idea, we shouldn't be surprised that so many other economies are starting to move ahead of us in this difficult time.

Frankly, I cannot understand why anybody would not support this rule or the underlying bill. I hope that Members change their minds, think about the Small Business Administration and the small businesses we can help today, and the great good we can do to help support jobs in this country.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Ms. PINGREE of Maine. Mr. Speaker, I have to say, my colleague continues to act as though we don't have a problem out there with our economy. That somehow, as happened in the last administration, we can just take this laissez-faire attitude; we can just say it will get better on its own, we don't need to do anything or somehow this recovery has already been good enough. Well, I don't hear anybody saying it is good enough, that there is enough jobs and enough support.

I want to quote from a couple of things I recently read that reinforce this issue that there isn't enough credit and lending going on, particularly to help our small businesses who are, as I have said before, are one of the important engines to drive this economy.

A report by the U.S. Congressional Joint Economic Committee that was released in May found that small businesses have been severely hurt by the tighter lending standards that resulted from the 2008 financial crisis. I want to quote a couple of sentences from that report: The tightened credit conditions experienced by small businesses have curtailed their ability to meet payroll or produce the products and services that are in demand. In 2009, small business hiring was 20 percent below its 2001-2007 average.

As further evidence of the impact that tight credit markets are having on small businesses, hiring in mid sized and larger establishments has been increasing since the middle of 2009 while small business hiring continues to decline. I don't know how much more evidence we need than what we hear every weekend, but it is clear small businesses in our districts are still struggling.

There was some question about whether or not the bankers even wanted this to happen, whether banks already had plenty of money to lend, people were just not showing up to take it. I want to read a letter from the Independent Community Bankers of America. They say: This act would offer capital to interested community banks to use to increase small business credit. It goes on to say: Notably, leveraging the $30 billion in funds with community banks would potentially support many times that in loan volume to small businesses, as much as $300 billion in additional lending.

Well, I don't know anyone who analyzes our businesses out there who says it wouldn't be good to have more credit, more availability, more lending, more growth in our businesses. We haven't been going on that path, we haven't been growing fast enough, and we haven't done a sufficient amount to support availability of credit and growth in our small businesses.

Now we have done, according to this report, a fair amount for some of our bigger or midsized businesses, but yet we are always the ones who say, and now I am going to quote from Professor Campbell Harvey of Duke University, his quote, ``Small and medium-sized firms are the drivers of employment growth in the economy, and they are being squeezed.'' He went on to say, ``Results show an extraordinary 44 percent of small businesses restricted their capital spending below desired levels because of borrowing difficulties. These capital projects create jobs both today and over the longer term.'' He concludes by saying, ``Analysis suggests we need to refocus our efforts on the root of the problem. Businesses are not spending on capital projects because of borrowing difficulties. Fixing the credit problem goes a long way toward creating the conditions for robust employment growth.''

We can talk around this all we want, but it's a relatively simple problem that we have all known about ever since this economy started going bad. Banks tightened up on their lending. There hasn't been enough credit availability. Businesses have been struggling. Many of them just want to hang on. Some of them actually want to grow.

And here is Professor Harvey telling us, ``Results show an extraordinary 44 percent of small businesses restricted their capital spending below desired levels because of borrowing difficulties.'' Borrowing difficulties, that's almost half of small business reporting this, borrowing difficulties mean they can't get enough money to borrow. They want to borrow money. These are legitimate businesses, many with good credit ratings, who just can't get enough out there.

And here are the bankers saying to us, yeah, this would put potentially $300 billion in additional lending into our economy at a time when we are just starting to chug forward, where people are just starting to feel a little bit hopeful, where consumer credit is going up just a little bit, but we are not doing enough.

It's easy to stand back and say, oh, no, no, this isn't the government's job. But remember what happened before we started assisting in this terrible recession. We were going nowhere. We were losing a tremendous amount of jobs.

I don't like spending this money any more than anybody else, no matter what my colleagues on the other side of the aisle may say. Nobody likes to increase the deficit or feel we are spending more money. But are we really going to turn our backs on our small businesses and on our community
banks when they are saying to us, Almost half of us are having trouble accessing the credit we need? Couldn't you just give us a helping hand?

We helped out Wall Street. We helped out the big financial institutions. Now, we finally have a bill before us to help the backbone of our businesses and we are going to say ``no.''

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Ms. PINGREE of Maine. Mr. Speaker, I wish to say a few things in conclusion.

We have debated a little bit today about whether or not this bill is important, and I just want to say this is a critical need that we are fulfilling today. This bill will support small businesses when they need it most--access to the financing they need to survive, to grow, to expand and create the jobs that will drive our economic recovery.

I don't really know how anyone could oppose this. I know this is essential because I hear it from businesses throughout the 125 towns in my district, and I know this is essential because I have owned a business myself for much of my adult life. For many years, I owned a knitting company that sold our products around the country.

I grew the business, and eventually employed 10 people in a town of just 350 year-round residents. And like many women who start their own businesses, I know what it is to argue with a banker to get more access to credit, to start your business or expand your business on a credit card, or to have to go to your husband to cosign on a loan.

Now I own an inn and a restaurant that uses vegetables grown on our island and locally caught seafood, and I still know what it is to meet a payroll and argue with the bank about borrowing the money to expand.

Mr. Speaker, I have been lucky to own a business that's been an important part of my own community, but it never would have been able to survive without cooperative bankers in my community or access to the investment that the business needed to grow.

When businesses are coming to us and saying this is their problem, how could we possibly tell them no? And when facing a tough economic crisis like this one, it is vital that we do everything in our power to support the small businesses that create 64 percent of new jobs in this country, that comprise more than 99 percent of all employer companies, and that are the backbone of the communities that most of us live in.

This bill is an important step in supporting those small businesses, ensuring that they have the necessary capital to stay in business and to expand as the economy recovers. This bill is more than just simply an investment in small business. Frankly, it is an investment in American job growth. And what could be more important at this moment in time?

I urge a ``yes'' vote on the previous question and on the rule.

I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

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