Political Quotes

“Madam President, I wish to start simply by recognizing the tremendous work the chair of the Small Business Committee is doing in championing commonsense strategies to assist our small businesses in being the job factories that they can be if they have access to credit. That is where the genesis of this bill comes from. The question we have heard in each of our States is: How can I, as a small business, gain access to credit when the credit markets are frozen? We have done precious little to assist them. So often, we need to indulge in far less partisanship and a lot more problem solving. If one investigates what is going on in the credit markets for small business, one finds that the businesses have gone to their banks, and the banks have said, we are cutting your credit line in half or we are eliminating it. The small business said, well, we have always made every payment. Yes, but we are in a land of frozen credit and we cannot extend the same amount of credit. When we give you that line of credit, it counts against our leverage, and we have to increase our capital holdings to meet the leverage requirements. So we are taking away or cutting in half or cutting by 90 percent your line of credit. At that point, the small businesses go to other banks and find out the other banks are in the same position.…”