Olympia Snowe

I just encourage all of us to think about children, about the problems they face, and about our responsibility to help them navigate their way through those waters.

Due in no small part to the leadership of Senators Rockefeller and Snowe, the E-Rate program from its inception focused on providing high-capacity transmission services to libraries and schools.

I do want to acknowledge the bipartisan effort and support for the E-Rate Program by Chairman Rockefeller and Maine's original E-Rate champion, Olympia Snowe.

We would not have connectivity and all that it brings to our schools and libraries if it were not for E-Rate.

In closing, libraries are vital community technology hubs, and we simply cannot allow inadequate bandwidth to be the limiting factor for what our students and our nations can achieve.

If we ever want to harness the wind off of our shores, it has to be through an investment tax credit.

By the end of this decade, I believe that every school in America should have 1 gigabit of connectivity.

We need to create E-Rate 2.0.

The E-Rate program has fundamentally transformed education in this country.

Thank you. I will be a fast talker. And I want to thank all of you for your very impressive testimony.

Do you think it is possible to draw a line, the cutoff on $250,000?

Exactly where does that stand today and how effective has that been, because I do think it is a great approach in helping early-stage companies to get established.

I think start-ups, obviously, are crucial to generating economic growth in this country and we are reliant on those starting new firms.

None of these goals can be accomplished without compromise and without bipartisanship.

We urged the President to restore the SBA Administrator to cabinet level status, where it rightfully belongs.

Given the current uncertainty with respect to both taxes and regulations and the overall environment and what is going to happen regarding the fiscal cliff and going forward, to what degree is that suppressing entrepreneurship at this…

I do not need a survey to understand what is going on on Main Streets and what is happening that they do not like in Washington.

No one has been more devoted to championing small businesses than Chair Landrieu.

Senator Snowe was one of the leading voices on this provision.

I cannot think of any higher priority than being a megaphone for the 150,000 small businesses in my State of Maine.

It is hard to believe that this is my final Small Business Committee hearing.

Without small businesses, we truly cannot have a recovery.

The President has called on us to do this.

The SUCCESS Act, which is pending now, received 57 votes before we left.