On the recordMarch 10, 2011
I am disappointed that I had to file cloture on a bill as important as this one. We were going to have a new day in the Senate. I think it is really too bad. This is the small business innovation bill, and everyone knows we have had an open amendment process. People can offer amendments on anything they want. I think this is suggestive of maybe something I do not understand. Why wouldn't my Republican colleagues want us to move to a small business bill to help create jobs? We are told that 85 percent of all jobs in America are small business jobs. Should we not be trying to help them? That is what we have been working on. We have not been doing all of these things, these 'messages,' cutting out programs for little boys and girls who want to learn to read, cutting Pell grants for young men and women who are in college, cutting the ability of renewable energy projects to go forward, and all of these other messages they are sending the American people. We are trying to create jobs. We have spent this Congress, over here in the Senate, on bipartisan issues creating jobs: FAA, 280,000 jobs. We just finished, within the last few hours, the bill that will change the patent system in this country. That has needed changing for 60 years, and we have done that. Now they are blocking our going to a small business bill, another bipartisan bill.
