Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act -- Motion to Proceed--Resumed

Floor Speech

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Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I would like to thank my friend, the Senator from Kansas, for his leadership on this issue. This is something on which he and I spent a lot of time working, as have, I know, the Senators from Delaware, from Florida, and we are joined now by the Senator from Missouri as well. We are all new Senators.

We said before when we unveiled this we did not get the memo that we should take Presidential election years off. We still think the needs of our country ought to trump election-year politicking. We think this is one of those spaces where we can find that common ground.

I spent 20 years as an entrepreneur and a funder of startup businesses, and everything in my experience validates what Senator Moran has talked about. But, candidly, the facts show 80 percent of all of the new jobs created in America in the last 20 years came from startup businesses. They are not all tech businesses. I think of Under Armour, which is right up the road in Maryland, close to our friend from Delaware.

There are certain key things that every startup business needs: They need access to capital, they need access to talent, they need access to new ideas. We need to make sure we have a stable regulatory environment that is not overly burdensome in each way we move the ball in this legislation, both that we passed and that we are working on right now.

Senator Moran mentioned the JOBS Act, which looked at access to capital issues, how we can perhaps allow companies access to the public markets in a cleaner way. I want to commend the Presiding Officer as well. He took the lead on a whole new area of fundraising around crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, and using the tools of the Internet, in effect, democratizing the ability to raise capital.

In this legislation, Startup 2.0, we take on a series of other issues. One of the issues is the question of talent. Every country in the world competes for talent. We attract some of the best talent in the world to come to our world-class universities. Oftentimes, we then train them in science, technology, engineering, and math with graduate degrees. I wish we could fill all of those slots in American universities with native-born Americans. But we do not have enough.

Consequently, we train the best and brightest in the world, then send them home to start their businesses. I can tell you, in Virginia, where we are proud to have a vibrant high-tech community, an entrepreneurial community, literally one-third of all of our high-tech firms in Northern Virginia, the founders are first-generation Americans. If we had the same immigration policies 20 years ago that we have today, we would not have had that kind of explosive growth particularly all across America in the nineties from technology.

So I want to turn to my colleague, the Senator from Delaware, a State that punches above its weight, a small State but a State with great universities, a State which has a rich entrepreneurial climate as well, what got the Senator involved--I know he has a background in business as well--on this issue. I know the Senator wants to share as well some of the aspects of Startup 2.0.

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Mr. WARNER. I commend the Senator from Kansas for his comments. I am fond of Canada. My mom's family is from Canada. It is remarkable. Canada, over the last 3 years, has aggressively sought out worldwide talent.

I ask the Senator from Kansas whether he thinks it is good policy in what we do now--and, once again, I make very clear, this is about growing American jobs because we have more job openings in the advanced fields of science, technology, engineering, and math than there are American citizens applying for those jobs.

I ask the Senator from Kansas whether it would make sense--if we thought about this from a national security standpoint, would it make sense for us to take, for example, a Chinese lieutenant and send him to West Point and expose him to everything we have in terms of our national security ideas and then send him home?

I guess I ask the Senator whether he thought that would be good national security policy. Does it affect our current national immigration policy on an equally important front, in terms of job creation and economic activity?

Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, the answer to that in Kansas is that it doesn't make any sense at all. There is no good judgment there. That is a point I would make in a more broad way. The provisions of Startup 2.0 are mostly about common sense, things that would make sense to the people of my State and to the people of the State of Virginia who, if you looked at a problem said how can you solve it and grow the economy, they would say these things make common sense. That is what this legislation is about.

In my view, I guess 80 percent of our colleagues in the Senate at least would be supportive of the provisions of this legislation. I think the Senators on the floor this afternoon and others are out to prove that when there is broad support for commonsense ideas, we are still in a legislative body that can accomplish much and that, as the Senator from Virginia is fond of saying, we didn't get the memo that says we don't work during an election year. The American people expect us to make the necessary accomplishments to grow the economy, to put Americans to work, and to get our fiscal house in order.

Again, I ask if the Senator has any items to close with.

Mr. WARNER. No. I hope we can get a number of our colleagues to join us. This doesn't fall under a traditional Democratic versus Republican lexicon. This is more about future versus past. This is the future of global competition for talent, for ideas, and for capital. This is where job creation will come from. I look forward to working with the Senator and our other colleagues to make sure we get the support here and in the House and get this bill passed. I thank my friend, the Senator from Kansas.

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