Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

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Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, this week we celebrate National Small Business Week. Small businesses are so important to job creation in this country. So much of the innovation that takes place in this country happens as the result of the work of small businesses. Two-thirds of the jobs we expect to be created to lead us out of the recession and through this recovery are going to be created by small businesses.

It is important that in this Chamber we do everything we can to support small businesses. I am pleased that I have been able to be a member of the Small Business Committee. I applaud the leadership of Senator Landrieu and Senator Snowe, the chair and ranking member, for all of the good work they have done for small business.

I can tell you from my own personal experience just how important small businesses are. My husband and I started our married life and for 8 years ran a family business. It put us both through graduate school and gave us a downpayment on a house. It employed a number of young people for 8 years. It taught me a lot about meeting a payroll and making sure we could take care of our employees, help make sure they had good jobs. So I have had that personal experience to make me understand just how critical small businesses are to our economy.

I am here on the floor also to talk about bipartisan legislation that my colleague from New Hampshire, Ms. Ayotte, and I are introducing today to boost small business exporting.

Just as small businesses are the backbone of so much of this country's economy, they are clearly the backbone of New Hampshire's economy. It should come as no surprise to all of our constituents in New Hampshire that both Senator Ayotte and I serve on the Small Business Committee because we know how important those businesses are to our State. We both recognize how critical it is for us as a delegation to work across the aisle and across Chambers when possible to help the small businesses in New Hampshire provide the good jobs the residents of New Hampshire need.

So I am glad Senator Ayotte and I are working together to introduce legislation to help remove barriers to exporting for small businesses in New Hampshire and across the United States. The bill we are introducing today, the Small Business Export Growth Act, is the result of a Small Business Committee field hearing that we hosted together in Manchester, NH, last August. We held that hearing because we recognized that exports offer a tremendous opportunity for small businesses.

Unfortunately, for so many small businesses, those foreign markets have remained an untapped resource for most of them. Over 95 percent of the world's customers live outside of the United States, but only 1 percent of our small businesses export. That is a particularly shocking number when we compare to it large businesses because over 40 percent of large businesses sell their products overseas. So we have to do more to help our small businesses get into those international markets.

At our field hearing we heard about some of the barriers our small businesses face when they try to go global. Our legislation is an attempt to remove some of those barriers so that small businesses can access new sources of revenue and create jobs. One of the problems we heard about is that navigating the Federal bureaucracy can be a special challenge for small businesses that wish to export. I know the Presiding Officer and I can both appreciate that because we know how hard it is for us to navigate the Federal bureaucracy.

Senator Ayotte and I heard from two such New Hampshire companies that rely on State and Federal offices to help them export. I want to talk about one of those companies specifically. It is a company that is called Secure Care. Secure Care has developed a technology that protects Alzheimer's patients who may wander away from sidence. It also protects newborns who are still in the maternity ward.

Grace Preston, who is the international sales manager for Secure Care, told us that the company has significantly expanded its growth by selling overseas. Grace also told us that Secure Care could not have done that without Federal and State export programs working together. In New Hampshire, we are very fortunate because our State and Federal export services work seamlessly, and that has been important in helping our businesses grow their exports.

In 2010 New Hampshire's exports grew about 40 percent. That was almost twice the national average and the most of any State in the country. So it has been very critical to our small businesses.

But we also heard that State and Federal agencies don't always have that same collaborative relationship in other places across the country. According to our former New Hampshire trade director, Dawn Wivell, these services sometimes, in some places, can overlap or, even worse, sometimes there are agencies that refuse to work together. Our bill attempts to require better coordination to make more successes like Secure Care a reality across the country.

Our bill also encourages the Federal Government to do more to promote the opportunity of exporting and to get the word out about Federal export programs.

Foreign markets can be daunting for small businesses, but that should not stop our innovators from trying to compete. Our small businesses must be assured that the Federal Government will help them when considering exporting. Part of our responsibility is to try to do everything we can to put into place policies that help small businesses when they want to try to export.

I thank Senator Ayotte for her cooperation and for the work we have done together. I thank both Senator Ayotte and her staff, along with mine, for working on this issue. I look forward to advancing this legislation in the Senate and to continue to recognize the important role that small business plays in our economy.

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