On the recordMarch 16, 2021
I rise in support of Isabella Guzman, currently the director of California's Office of the Small Business Advocate--the Presiding Officer's State--to be the Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration. We all know the importance of small businesses and how they have been hit so hard during this pandemic. Small businesses employ nearly half of all private sector workers and make outsized contributions to the innovation that makes America's economy strong. Yet the coronavirus has put millions of people out of business, hundreds of thousands of these mom-and-pop, brick-and-mortar retail shops out of business, and restaurants out of business. We are so pleased that there is, as we say in Minnesota, a lighthouse that we are looking to now. I was up in Duluth on Sunday, and instead of the light at the end of the tunnel, which so many of us talk about with regard to the end of this pandemic, the mayor there referred to it as a lighthouse, for they have a lot of lighthouses on Lake Superior. The end of this pandemic is our lighthouse. We see the blinking lights from a distance, but we know we are not there yet. To get there, we not only need to get this vaccine to every person--and the President has said we will have vaccines available by the end of May for every adult in America--but we have to get it distributed, and our pandemic bill certainly is going to be a major step toward getting that done. We also need to get our business economy back in order.…
