Kevin Hern

I can think of half of mine that are not in racially discriminated areas.

We try to fix a lot of national problems or a lot of local problems with national Band-Aids, if you will.

We need to champion the fact that those folks that work in restaurants and the retails, retail clothing stores, that they have seen the largest wage growth.

As a small business owner and businessman for the past 34 years, I know firsthand how valuable the Small Business Administration's aid can be.

do not come back here and ask for that again until you have cleaned up your act.

the taxpayers should demand full accountability, and they are.

Because of this, I am fully supportive of the SBA's Office of Inspector General and the work they do to improve the integrity and performance and accountability of the SBA.

I think it is part of the bureaucracy, what happens when you get too big, which can be a big determinant to this aid, and therefore, cause damage to small businesses in America.

the only way we are going to work it out in our economy, the way it is structured is that we have more people working, paying in taxes, and less dependent on the federal government.

what we are going to be leaving our kids and grandkids in the future. Somebody is going to have to pay the piper at some point in the future.

Thanks to the policies championed by President Trump and the work of a Republican Congress in his first two years in office, we have a booming economy.

This has helped the folks in Southeast Missouri.

I believe we are going to have some kind of, you know, a hiccup with student loan debt, but that is just me, and we have got to figure out a way to fix that.

However, I am also aware that the SBA has had wasteful expenditures and mismanaged programs in the past.

I think that it will be impossible for a future Congress, in the face of a recession, to do nothing.

They do not care about the people's House right now, they care about making it a House of investigations.

So it is pretty easy to figure out if they are performing or not, so I would think that process is not the same as somebody that is coming in brand new that you are trying to do the examination on.

So I would say with 70 office folks working, analysts or whatever they care called, folks in your office, you processed four new applications this year?

I cannot imagine if you are not doing any applications really what you are doing a whole lot of.

There is zero accountability, and that is what we are trying to do is provide oversight.

It is really good to be here today as a small business owner and business man, job creator for over 34 years.

this member of Congress is extremely disappointed in what is happening in this program, and it needs to be fixed.

Does it not concern you that if you have got zero, so you just, I mean, we are okay with just spending taxpayer money?

I would have thought that after the Senate Small Business Committee that you would probably be really tuned up to really defend yourself when you came here but it does not appear that.

My bill, H.R. 4407, would help to continue the success by reauthorizing the program and by adding new program safeguards, data standards, and reporting requirements.