It is absolutely critical to help you in performing the mission of your office.

The distribution of these regulatory costs is uneven and will disproportionately affect small business.

This committee led that effort, and it provides much needed relief to small businesses through the SBA lending programs.

Without question, federal, administrative, and regulatory burden on businesses large and small continue to grow every year.

we did not shove the bill down your throat, we gave you a year to come up with a way to provide Americans with healthcare

It is just unconscionable that fees and administrative burdens for small businesses have gone up so substantially.

Not in this economy. Not now. Not for small businesses.

We are going to try to repeal that piece of the healthcare law which will not affect healthcare policy at all.

we are going to continue every day, all day, to try to get this 1099 problem resolved

there were amendments put on the floor, both by Democrats and Republicans to repeal 1099

I have gotten to know Senator Akaka and his wife, Millie, and his family, and so I just again want to thank you, Senator Akaka, publicly here in my own State for your friendship over the years and the work that we have done together.

I am really pleased that Senator Akaka indicates that he is going to continue to stay on top of this so that those of you who are here testifying today know that we are going to stay on top of this and he is going to stay on top of it…

As Senator Akaka says, we have been looking at this for some time, and I just thought particularly for maybe some of the people here from the media to remind them that this program started back in 1956.

I can show you right now how you can save a billion dollars in your budget a billion dollars that you could reallocate to some of the things you want to do.

I think you may have a window of opportunity between the election and the end of the year to perhaps deal with that.

I come to the floor today to speak on an issue that is of great importance to my home State of Louisiana: Federal disaster assistance. As you know, along the gulf coast, we keep an eye trained on the Gulf of Mexico during hurricane season…

What I believe those skeptics fail to recognize is that though banks are often happy to finance the next factory of an established company or the tenth deployment of a developed technology, they have very little interest or inclination in…

I have come to the floor to speak, as many of my colleagues have today, on the DISCLOSE Act, which is being sponsored by Senator Schumer, primarily, and other Members of the Senate, to try to fix and make significant adjustments to an area…

I believe it is this risk that we need to balance against any perceived risk of failure of a given project.

I am encouraged to hear that the V-Vehicle Company... is making significant progress with DOE on their second application.

I find it perplexing that DOE would take this position when the entire purpose of these loan guarantee programs is to spur domestic development and job creation.

I would argue that we must lift the barriers that currently make it impossible to develop and manufacture new clean energy technologies here.

I know we are getting ready to vote on a very important piece of legislation--the Small Business Job Creation Act--that we have actually been working on now for a year and a half. It is hard to believe that a year and a half has gone by…

With access to Tier 1 capital, I believe that the community banks that participate in this program will be able to provide small businesses with the credit they need to grow and hire.

Seacoast is a small bank. It only has $130 million in assets. According to this banker's testimony to me yesterday, he is going to take this bill and all of its provisions, and he believes he can leverage $180 million in SBA loans to small…