Ben Cardin

I was and still am disappointed about the rush partisan process that ultimately resulted in last year's Republican tax bill.

I hope you will look beyond just the tunnel vision of the PBGC and the impact that it has on the PBGC stability, but look also to help us develop policies that achieve the objective of why we had the PBGC, and that is to provide retirement…

A defined benefit plan provides a much stronger protection for life-time income.

Social Security was never intended to be the sole support for a person's retirement income.

It is affecting the viability of defined benefit plans in this country.

It is in crisis. It needs to be dealt with.

I think the American people need to understand how important these treaties are to our national security.

I think it is not in our national security interest to do that.

I think would be a disaster because it would only isolate us more from what Russia is doing.

We recognize that New START gives us the opportunity to do the inspections not only on active sites but also those sites that are not active.

I think all of us would say that that is a major concern.

It is a very important bill that deals with our international efforts, the U.S. participating in neotropical birds.

I do urge you to let us have additional thoughts on how we can refine the specific programs for access to capital or whether there are additional suggestions you have on new opportunities for access to capital, and it can be outside of the…

This is an issue that Democrats and Republicans can come together with. We can get something done, and I think this hearing has been very helpful.

This is an oversight hearing for us to get input as to how our Committee can work with the SBA to improve the opportunities for access of capital in the targeted areas that we have talked about.

Sometimes the banking regulations and the rules and regulations make it difficult to do what you think is right.

We need to think somewhat out of the box.

If you are coming out of prison, I am sure your credit score is not exactly that high.

Well, I want to thank this panel. Both panels have been extremely helpful.

We have too many people who we lose in our economy that need an opportunity.

So one way to improve it would be to give it a statutory basis.

The Trump administration zeroed out the budget. Congress restored it.

If you are going to deal with the disparities that we heard about, the wealth disparity in this country, you have got to deal with entrepreneurship.

The leading bank gave out 58 SBA 7(a) loans, and one of our largest banks gave out zero.

It might be useful for the Small Business Committee to get input into the Banking Committee as we deal with this issue.