Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012

Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, this amendment would make it easier for small business to better access capital in order to expand and create jobs. On November 3, 2011, the House of Representatives passed a companion measure, which was introduced by Representative Kevin McCarthy, on a near unanimous vote of 413 to 11; 175 Democrats in the House supported this legislation. We have an opportunity here to show the American people that we are serious about creating jobs and to pass this amendment here in the Senate.

This amendment would remove a regulatory roadblock in order to make it easier for small businesses to access needed capital to expand and create jobs. Current SEC registration exemption rules severely hamper the ability of small businesses to raise capital by allowing them to raise capital only from investors with whom they have a preexisting relationship.

By modernizing this rule, small businesses and startups would be able to more easily raise capital from accredited investors nationwide. According to the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council:

This is a long overdue solution that will widen the pool of potential funders for entrepreneurs. Our economy will improve once entrepreneurs are provided the tools, opportunities and incentives that they need to hire and invest.

Earlier this month, the SEC Small Business Advisory Committee on Small and Emerging Companies recommended that the agency ``relax or modify'' the general solicitation prohibition as a good policy to increase the amount of capital available to small businesses.

In his State of the Union Address last week, President Obama called on Congress to pass legislation that will help startups and small businesses access capital in order to expand and create jobs. The President said:

Most new jobs are created in start-ups and small businesses. So let's pass an agenda that helps them succeed. Tear down regulations that prevent entrepreneurs from getting the financing to grow. Both parties agree on these ideas. So put them in a bill and get it on my desk this year.

This is exactly what this amendment will do. And it has support from investors and entrepreneurs alike. When you have unemployment hovering around 9 percent, we need to pass legislation that will enable our job creators to expand and create jobs. As I said, this legislation received overwhelming bipartisan support in the House of Representatives. I hope we can do the same here in the Senate by passing this amendment.

We all talk about the importance of making it easier, making it less costly, less difficult for our small businesses and entrepreneurs to get access to capital so they can create jobs and get the economy growing again. So many times these are contentious, they are controversial differences of opinion about how best to do that. We fight over regulations, we fight over taxes. This is something where there is broad bipartisan support, almost unanimous support in the House of Representatives, a vote of 413 to 11 in support of this legislation when it was voted on in the House of Representatives.

We have an opportunity to do something that is very straightforward, that is broadly supported by both Democrats and Republicans--at least it was in the House of Representatives--that the President has suggested we ought to be working on, looking for these types of approaches to freeing up access to capital for our small businesses.

You have the folks out there in the business community overwhelmingly supportive of doing away with the regulatory barrier, the regulatory obstacle this particular regulation represents in terms of access to capital for our small businesses. It seems like one of those issues on which there should be no disagreement. I hope that will be the case. I hope we can get a vote on this amendment, get this put into law and put into effect so our small businesses and our entrepreneurs in this country can do what they do best; that is, create jobs. They have to have access to capital in order to do that. This makes that process easier. It does away with some of these unnecessary regulations and roadblocks and barriers that exist today.

I hope my colleagues in the Senate will support this amendment.

I yield the floor.

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