Nydia Velázquez

Providing a universal voucher program would lift 9 million people out of poverty, reduce child poverty by 36 percent overall.

Well, sir, the numbers showed otherwise, and those numbers change in LMI communities when we worked and brought in mission-based lenders such as CDFIs, CDCs, micro lenders.

Well, I do have the numbers. I do have the data because I am the Chair of the Small Business Committee, and I work with the SBA.

The staffing plans presented seem inadequate.

Employees are not given training in the particular operations they perform as part of their function.

I have a responsibility, and we all have a responsibility to protect ourselves and to protect our staff.

Modern-day redlining has left communities of color with limited access to much-needed financial services, so policymakers must act with urgency to address these issues.

Do you want me to make drugs or fix issues? I don't have time to do both.

Unfortunately, Mr. Quarles, the report also points out that many small businesses and households remain financially drained.

Increasing the number of women and minorities who participate in the SBIR/STTR program is a top priority of mine.

One of my top priorities for the upcoming reauthorization is to improve participation of minority and disadvantaged persons in the program.

Twenty-eight percent of all of the Main Street businesses around the country are owned by immigrants.

Elections have consequences, and we can start discussing the fact that today more than 120 million Americans, roughly, a third of the population, have received at least one vaccine dose.

We are losing 10,000 to 15,000 units a year to obsolescence or delay.

Congress has a moral obligation to let the people of Puerto Rico decide their own self-determination process.

However proponents of this alternative approach to label it, anything short of statehood is colonial and unequal.

$70 billion is necessary to repair our public housing infrastructure.

this is decolonization, and we have a moral obligation to provide whatever it takes for the people of Puerto Rico

As we did after the 2020 election all across the country, Democrats respect democratic election results and should respect Puerto Rico's decision on how to exercise its own self-determination.

the government will use public funds to hold this special election at a time when Puerto Rico continues to face a financial crisis

the conversation should not be about a process. It should be about a process that respects the will of the people.

It includes a transition plan.

we want to make sure that not only the wealthiest 1 percent... have the opportunity to be engaged and participate democratically

any such process needs to be fair, inclusive, and democratic.

Yet it deprives them of an offer of statehood, which they have never had, they just asked for, and only Congress can deliver.