Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I thank Senator Landrieu for her great leadership on this bill. What I have heard over and over from small businesses in my State is they want to know how come Wall Street is doing OK right now and they are still struggling. Somebody once said that it is like Wall Street got a cold and Main Street got pneumonia. They are still having trouble. Yet 65 percent of the jobs in this country come from small businesses. When I look at the big businesses in Minnesota, such as Medtronic, it started as a little business in a garage. The Mayo Clinic started with two doctors starting a practice together. 3M started as a sandpaper company up in Two Harbors, MN. Big businesses start as small businesses, and we need to help them. I support all the work that is done with getting the credit out there. I did want to note the important part of this amendment that was put together by myself and Senator LeMieux to help with exports. Ninety-five percent of the customers of this country right now are outside our borders, and 30 percent of small businesses say: If we could export, we would love to do it. We just don't have the people who speak the language who work for us. We only have five employees or we don't have the contacts to export our goods to Turkey. We don't have a full-time trade person. Having some help for them so they can talk with people at the Commerce Department to figure out are these real customers, simply get on the computer and call our embassies.…”