Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak about the Clarifying the Small Business Runway Extension Act, a bill that I am proud to lead alongside the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Stauber). Mr. Speaker, Americans expect our government to work efficiently and to follow through. They believe, and I agree with them, that when Congress passes a law, Federal agencies should implement it. Our goal with this bill is quite simple: to make sure that the Small Business Administration respects the will of Congress as expressed in the Small Business Runway Extension Act of 2018, a law that was enacted in December 2018. The bipartisan law was designed to ease the transition for businesses between SBA's small and other-than-small categories for the purposes of determining Federal contracting preferences. Prior to the law, SBA evaluated eligibility by looking at 3 years of a business' gross receipts. In the law, SBA was instructed to extend that period to 5 years. The idea is that year-to-year changes in a small business' receipts will now be less likely to create a sudden loss of eligibility for this important contracting preference for small businesses. As I have heard many times from small business owners in Maine, certainty is key to growth, and that is what the 5-year calculation is designed to provide.…”