Suzanne M. Kosmas: “Thank you very much. I thank you for yielding and for hosting this important forum on small business. I appreciate the…”

“Thank you very much. I thank you for yielding and for hosting this important forum on small business. I appreciate the picture that has been painted here on the large issues nationally and how they are affecting our economy, but I come to speak from a personal perspective as a person who has been a small business owner, self-employed my entire adult life. And that means that in my community, most of my friends and colleagues are also small business owners small- to medium-sized business owners, and I recognize the things that are important to them. We recognize them, of course, as the engines of our economy. And what we know for sure is that, over the last decade, 70 percent of new jobs created in this country have been created through small businesses. That is why they are so critically important to us during this economic time. We want to ensure that they are able to survive and thrive, and I think we all are working together in order to make that happen.”