Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, the beginning of so many great American stories is built around starting a small business in your family name, becoming a foundation in your local community--making it in America. Small businesses are major drivers of wealth creation in our overall economy. They account for two-thirds of net new jobs and nearly half of our U.S. economic activity. For many of them, that dream starts with going to a bank and getting a small business loan. For many Americans, the sound of their name, the color of their skin, the language that they speak or who they love can doom that dream if a bank says that they are at risk. This isn't hypothetical. I, too, was born and raised in south Texas. I can tell you that when I go home and I see some businesses that have closed, I ask my family whether it was due to the pandemic, or no demand for the cost of services that they had. I am told that they just had trouble with finances and they couldn't get a loan. In some small rural areas, because I did grow up in rural south Texas, there aren't credit unions everywhere like there are in the city of Houston where I live now. In the city of Houston, many small businesses during the pandemic in round one couldn't even get a PPP loan. We had to go in and do a carve-out to literally force the banks to provide loans to small businesses. I am glad that one of my colleagues was openhearted and gave people a lot of loans. I just hope that that included some to minority small businesses.…”