Political Quotes

“Mr. President, in just a few moments Senator Landrieu is going to come to the floor to talk about the small business bill, and I will just say a word or two about my support for her efforts. She did something extraordinary last week. She is a determined Senator, and the time came when she wanted to see a fund created to lend money to small businesses. So she took to that desk and grabbed her charts and stayed there all day until she got the job done. She got 60 votes, which is a daunting task sometimes in the Senate, and added into this bill a fund to loan money to small businesses across America. We need it. We need it across America, and we need it in Illinois. There were over 258,000 small business employers in Illinois in 2006-- that is the last year for which we have data--led by professional services and construction firms. They account for over 98 percent of the employers in our State. These small businesses added 93,000 jobs in 2006, more than three times as many jobs added by Illinois companies with more than 500 employees. We can see that small businesses are a major part of our job economy. Another 850,000 people work for themselves, meaning the number of people working for small businesses was actually dramatically larger. I fear that some of the firms likely to have failed during this economic crisis would have continued to do battle and might have prospered if they would have had access to credit. That is why this small business bill is so important.…”