Default Prevention Act of 2013--Motion to Proceed
Floor Speech
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Mrs. SHAHEEN. Thank you, Madam President.
I am very happy to be able to come to the floor this afternoon to join those who have already spoken to commend the fact that we have finally come to an agreement, it appears, that will end this government shutdown, that will allow the country to pay its bills, and that will, hopefully, address some of the uncertainty and harm that has come to families, to businesses, and to this economy over the last several weeks.
I wish to thank and applaud the leadership of Majority Leader Reid and Republican Leader McConnell for being able to come together to reach this agreement. I also wish to commend the many people who have come to the floor this afternoon, led by Senator Collins, who have been working over the last week to try to come up with some ideas to provide a framework for an agreement. I was especially appreciative to be part of that group of 14 of us, along with Senator Collins--and I think her leadership was very important--along with Senator Klobuchar, Senator Pryor, and the many people who have come to the floor, in providing some impetus for people to work together and to move forward on an agreement that could finally end this shutdown. I certainly appreciated the comments of Senator Pryor when he talked about the need for us to work together, to listen to each other, and to put aside the blame game and address the many challenges facing this country.
That is clearly where we need to go next, and I certainly hope we will all in this Chamber recommit ourselves to doing that.
We need to pass this compromise quickly so we can end the shutdown's negative effects on our economy. We need to move forward and think about how we can get some agreement long term in the future, and I think the bipartisan efforts that have been shown over the last week will be very important to doing that.
The fact is, while the agreement is good news, we know the agreement is only short term and that we are going to have to figure out a way to address keeping the government open, address paying the Nation's bills, address coming up with a long-term budget agreement, and we do not have a whole lot of time to do that.
I hope people will understand the very real impacts I have been hearing in my office, I know Senator Collins has been hearing that as well, and people throughout this body have been hearing from people across the country about what the impact has been.
Yesterday I participated in a Small Business Committee hearing to hear the impacts of the shutdown on small businesses across the country, and I appreciate the leadership of Senator Landrieu in organizing that hearing. It gave a voice to many of the small businesses, to many of the people across this country who have been suffering as a result of the shutdown. I thought it would be helpful to share a few of those stories as a reminder that as happy as I am that we have reached agreement, we have a lot of work to do in the future to make sure this does not happen again.
One of the people we heard from yesterday was New Hampshire community banker Chuck Withee. He is the president of Provident Bank. They have four locations in New Hampshire. He told me that small businesses, as we know, ``are the backbone'' of what they do at his community bank. He said the ``shutdown has had a material and profound effect on many small businesses in the Southern New Hampshire region'' because of the shutdown of the SBA loan programs.
We all know how critical access to capital is to making sure businesses can operate. Chuck testified that Provident Bank has 12 loans that are stalled right now. They are just waiting for the SBA to open. They have a total of $2.7 million in small business loans--that is at just one small bank--that are currently on hold because of this crisis.
Sadly, according to Chuck, the consequences of this holdup may be permanent for some of those businesses:
There are purchase and sale agreements hanging in the balance, that may lapse and have to be renegotiated. ..... The small business owner may also lose credibility and the ability to negotiate similar contracts in the future.
He went on to say the numbers do not really include the dozens of applications for loans that would have come through the door but did not because of the shutdown.
He also talked about a new program that Provident was just about to launch before the shutdown, a program that would focus on microloans for very small businesses--those businesses that usually have borrowing needs of between $10,000 and $100,000 that would have been able to get loans as part of this program. Because of the shutdown, the bank had not continued that program. He indicated they hope to roll it out as soon as the government is operating again. But clearly there are businesses that have been hurt in the interim.
We heard from people across the country at that hearing yesterday, from another SBA lender, Sally Robertson, who pointed out that one of the borrowers she is working with has posted a $149,000 deposit on a new project--that if they cannot close in a timely fashion, they are going to lose that deposit.
We heard from some small businesses with Federal contracts. They have their contracts on hold, so they have had to dip into their cash reserves or furlough workers.
We also heard from a representative from the tourism industry who pointed out that travel and tourism in this country is losing $152 million a day during this government shutdown.
I know everybody here has heard stories such as that from their home States. I am sure the Presiding Officer has heard those kinds of stories from the State of Wisconsin.
Hopefully, we will reopen the government, we will pass this agreement today, we will be able to get those small businesses up and running again, we will be able to provide some certainty for those Federal contracts, we will be able to bring back to work those furloughed workers and make sure they get backpay. But the challenge is that we cannot let this happen again.
I am hopeful--because we have a budget conference committee going forward--there will be a process by which we can put in place a longer term budget agreement so we are not facing another shutdown in January, right after the holiday season. We do not want people to think they cannot spend money during this holiday season because there is going to be another government shutdown or because the country might think about again defaulting on its debts in early February.
As Chuck Withee from Provident Bank said yesterday: Small businesses will remain uncertain. They could face higher borrowing costs if Congress comes close to the brink yet again. It is an admonition I am certainly going to take to heart, and I hope all of us will.
Again, I thank everybody who has helped in reaching an agreement today. Hopefully, this will be approved by both Houses of Congress, we will get the government open, we will pay the country's bills, and we will not let it happen again.
I yield the floor.
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Mrs. SHAHEEN. Madam President, I very much appreciate my fellow Senator from New Hampshire Ms. Ayotte for her remarks. I would echo those. She and I have both been to the floor over the past few weeks to talk about the devastating impacts of this government shutdown. It has been an unnecessary hardship--a very real hardship--placed on so many New Hampshire families, so many New Hampshire businesses, and the challenges it meant for the economy of our State and for the Nation.
I ask my colleague if it would be important, as we think about going forward and trying to deal longer term with the need to come up with a budget for this country, the need to address paying our bills in the long term, if this kind of bipartisanship we tried to exhibit for New Hampshire would be important for all of us to think about as we try to solve those challenges long term and also for us to try to reassure the people of New Hampshire that I believe we are going to be working together to try and do that, and hopefully everyone else here will do the same?
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