Political Quotes

“I proudly rise today to urge my colleagues to vote for my straightforward, bipartisan bill that supports our Nation's female entrepreneurs. It is called the Women- Owned Small Business Program Transparency Act. As an engineer myself, and an entrepreneur and operator, I know very much firsthand that data can help us to address and understand some of our most pressing issues in business. Here is what the data says: Year after year, women-owned small businesses continue to be underrepresented when it comes to Federal contract funding. In other words, the playing field isn't nearly level. The good news is that there is already an initiative that is designed to address this. It is called the Women-Owned Small Business Federal Contracting Program. This program is popular and necessary to bridge the disparity in Federal contracts, but it needs some additional improvements. My bill will do just that by increasing transparency, oversight, and accountability. Through this program, the SBA aids other Federal agencies in meeting the statutory goal of awarding 5 percent of Federal contracts to women-owned businesses, a goal which the chairwoman mentioned has only been met twice in history. The program has experienced challenges, including a significant backlog of applications and poor visibility of the approval numbers by national certifying entities.…”