Landrieu Offers Resolution Honoring Entrepreneurs During National Small Business...

Landrieu Offers Resolution Honoring Entrepreneurs During National Small
Business Week

WASHINGTON, May 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- United States Senate Small
Business and Entrepreneurship Committee Chair Mary Landrieu, D-La., today
introduced a resolution honoring the nation's small businesses during National
Small Business Week.

The resolution can be found here:
http://sbc.senate.gov/legislation/2009%20Small%20Business%20Week%20Resolution.pdf

Below are Senator Landrieu's remarks introducing the resolution on the Senate
floor today:

This week is Small Business Week in America. All over our country we are
celebrating the entrepreneurial spirit of the over 27 million small businesses
in America that really serve as a backbone of our economy.

Just yesterday I was with Administrator Karen Mills as she opened Small
Business Week at one of the local hotels here, where there are hundreds of
small business owners receiving awards from all of our states for the
extraordinary work that they have done in opening, starting, building their
businesses at even these challenging times...

It's exciting that many of these small businesses owners are here with us in
Washington this week. So I wanted to come to the floor to speak about our
business owners, some of the challenges they're facing, and to acknowledge
that there will be a resolution that we're asking to be cleared this week in
honor of these millions of firms.

Madam President, as you know, Main Street firms pump almost $1 trillion into
our economy every year, creating two-thirds of all new jobs and accounting for
more than half of America's workforce.

Sometimes when people see corporations and businesses and they read the
headlines about General Motors or other large companies -- Exxon, Shell come
to mind -- those are good examples of national and international companies.
But they're not necessarily examples of where all the jobs are, contrary to
common belief. The jobs, they're hard to see sometimes because they're in
small places, neighborhoods and main streets, farm roads throughout our
country.

Small entrepreneurs -- employing themselves, maybe two or three or 10 or 15
other people -- are building the backbone of the American free enterprise
system. These are the family businesses throughout the country whose thread
still weaves the American dream. The dream of working for yourself, being your
own boss, setting your own hours, never working less than you would probably
in a large company, always working more, but it's quite rewarding. A business
you can pass down to your children and grandchildren, who earn their way in
the business.

This is what keeps the spirit of America going forward. These are the
businesses that we honor this week. They are the technological start-ups that
produce cutting-edge clean-energy sources, lifesaving medical advances, and
provide safer equipment for our troops protecting our way of life. They make
better construction materials that build new schools and better homes and
businesses that fix our roads and our bridges. These are the small
entrepreneurs out there that we honor this week.

Madam President, as you and our other colleagues know, small businesses are in
a world of hurt. They're in trouble. They're in very, very troubled waters;
very, very difficult times. As American consumers pinch pennies to pay the
bills, small business owners scramble to pay their own bills.

Entrepreneurs are being, unfortunately, turned away from many traditional
capital sources. Many of these small businesses have never in their history in
business missed a payment or been late on a payment. Yet, we're hearing some
very sad and troubling stories in the Small Business Committee. Ones like
Robert Cockerham, whose wife I believe was with him, if my memory serves. He
is a car dealer who took his life savings and started Car World.

Like many business owners, he put everything into this business. He became one
of the highest-selling dealerships in New Mexico, an exciting opportunity for
him and his family. But yet, as this recession unfolded, he was forced to
close some of his dealerships and lay off workers. He thought that most of his
tough decisions were behind him, only to find that a bank came in and
constricted his line of credit. He had never missed a payment or been late.

Unfortunately, now his business is in a very dire situation. That is why it's
important for us to press forward on everything we can through the Small
Business Administration, through the stimulus package, trying to reach
business owners like this that have not done anything wrong. They've simply
gotten caught up in one of the worst economic downturns in recent memory.

We need to do more, and we will. That's what our efforts are here today, in
the previous weeks and hopefully in the weeks to come. I'm proud to say that
we've taken some important steps, but we need to do so much more.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act took bold steps to increase access
to capital for our nation's entrepreneurs. In the Small Business Committee, we
worked to temporarily eliminate fees on SBA loans. I'm proud to report that
the week that that new rule went into effect we saw an immediate uptick of 25
percent of new loans being made through the SBA because of the reduction and
elimination of those fees. The Recovery Act has helped to stimulate new
lending and will continue, hopefully, to do so. We think, based on what is in
the Recovery Act, that it will pump about $16 billion in new loans and venture
capital to small businesses in America.

I continue to be concerned, however, about the road ahead for so many of our
small businesses -- not only in New York, the state, Madam President, that
you're representing -- but in Louisiana as well, where our unemployment rate,
thankfully, is lower than the average but nonetheless our businesses are
struggling. So we must double our efforts. I want to work with my colleagues
in the House to reauthorize the Small Business Administration and its critical
programs. These initiatives have assisted entrepreneurs in starting and
growing their businesses and were responsible, according to our records, for
1.5 million jobs created or sustained last year.

One of these small business owners is Bob Baker, the owner of Baker Sales, a
pipe and fence distributor in Louisiana and the state's small business owner
of the year.

I met Bob Baker just yesterday. He encourages his employees to take advantage
of the free classes the local Small Business Development Center offers. He has
taken advantage of the Center's counseling to cope with financial
difficulties. These days, Bob reports he's doing better than most small
business owners. He's stabilized his line of credit at a Chase Bank, but knows
right now he can't expand because of the current situation.

But, Madam President, let me say, if we're going to pull out of this recession
-- and I believe we will -- it is going to be because small business pulls us
out. Not the giant corporations, not the multinationals, but the entrepreneurs
that will put their face to the wind and move forward in difficult times.

The least we can do is reauthorize our Small Business Administration, make it
as robust and as effective and agile and muscular as possible to give them the
help that they need. So to help Bob Baker, to help Robert Cockerham and small
business owners like them who have testified before our Committee, let us
redouble our efforts to get our work done.

We must also, in conclusion, make sure that the billions of dollars in
stimulus money are moving to small businesses as required by law. I will be
having a hearing this week in my Committee, and I want to thank so many of my
members, particularly Senator Shaheen, Senator Hagan, Senator Cardin, who have
been particularly aggressive in this effort. I thank them very much.

So, again, it's Small Business Week. Pat a small business person on the back.
Thank him for doing his work or her work, because this will be the group that
leads America back to strength.

SOURCE U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship

Vicki Ekstrom of U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship,
+1-202-224-9431, vekstrom@sbc.senate.gov