Political Quotes

“I rise to strongly support the pending bill, the Small Business Jobs and Credit Act. I do it because it will help small business create jobs in Maryland. I spent much of the last several months visiting worksites in Maryland, and it was an exciting time. Maybe orders and customers are not up, but enthusiasm and entrepreneurship is up, and absolutely, in many areas, consumerism and customers are up. I visited bakeries, microbreweries, factories of small machine tool companies wanting to retool. During that time I visited Main Street, small streets, rural communities. I talked with small business owners and their employees. What was loud and clear and visible was that small businesses are stressed and strained. Small businesses said: Hey, Barb, it is sluggish out there. There is uncertainty, but we believe we can expand. We believe we can grow our business, but we need help. They continually talked about their problems in having access to credit--not because they were not good risks but because there was not good money out there for them to borrow. Even though these businesses are thriving, they could not expand because they could not get the loans they needed to grow.”