Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I thank the chairman of the Small Business Committee, Chairman Landrieu, for her leadership, and I commend her for that. I thank all of the Members of the Senate for supporting these two vital programs. We had much debate on these programs back in March for 5 weeks. There has been broad bipartisan support. They are vital job creators and innovators. They have provided more than 25 percent of the innovations that have occurred over this last decade and are certainly vital to the Defense Department as we are setting aside existing Federal research dollars for small business firms. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment, which is nearly identical to legislation that passed the Senate unanimously last December and which passed our Committee by a vote of 18 to 1 in March of this year. It is critical that we focus like a laser on job creation, and encourage an environment in which America's small businesses--our Nation's job generators--can once again flourish. We know that small businesses will lead us out of our economic morass. They employ more than half of all private sector employees and have created 64 percent of the net new jobs over the past 15 years. Ninety percent of that job creation is concentrated in four to five percent of all companies, commonly known as ``gazelles,'' or high-impact firms. The SBIR Program is designed to assist exactly these types of companies.…”