Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I certainly thank the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, and I thank the ranking member in the 118th Congress, Ms. Waters, for her work on this bipartisan bill, H.R. 298, Expanding Access to Capital for Rural Job Creators Act, sponsored by Alex Mooney, our Member from West Virginia, certainly a very rural place, mountainous, tough to get around, a lot like Arkansas. Small businesses, as the chairman said, are the backbone of the economy in Arkansas, as they are across the country. Almost 50 percent of jobs in this Nation are with traditional small businesses. Yet, they face obstacles in getting the capital they need to grow and create jobs under the best of circumstances, in Los Angeles or in Charlotte, the financial capital of the east. These greater challenges are really tough when you get out in the country. In Arkansas, almost all but two counties in our State are deeply rural. I was a bank president in a town of 100 people, in a county of 7,000. When you talk about capital needs, that was certainly the case. That is why I can support this wholly bipartisan legislation that would direct the Securities and Exchange Commission's Office of the Advocate for Small Business Capital Formation to study the problems faced by those small businesses, entrepreneurs, owners, and family businesses, that want to access capital to grow. This bill passed this House last July with bipartisan support, and so it should do it again today.…”