On the recordFebruary 2, 2012
I thank my friend for yielding. For a long time, Americans have believed if you work hard every day and play by the rules, you'll be able to earn enough to own a home and educate your children and retire with some dignity. It's the American Dream. Precious numbers, or large numbers of people, rather, are now disbelieving in that because it's not really happening in their lives. They're working as hard as they can, but they seem to go backwards, not forward, and they work so hard. You can't reignite the American Dream unless you reignite the middle class, and you can't reignite the middle class unless you reignite small business. Small businesses in this country create about two out of every three jobs created in the country. In the last 20 years, 80 percent of the new jobs have been created by businesses that are younger than a year old. So new small businesses are the key to getting things done. Now, if you talk to small business people around the country, as we have in our districts, here's what they'll tell you: Their number one concern these days is they don't have enough customers. There's not enough people eating in their restaurants or buying goods in their stores or buying the manufactured goods that they do or buying the software code that they write. They need more customers.…
