[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 51 (Wednesday, April 14, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3695-S3698]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. KERRY (for himself, Mr. Bond, Mr. Harkin, Mr. Bingaman, 
        Mr. Levin, Mr. Enzi, Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Domenici, Mr. Abraham, 
        Mr. Sarbanes, Mr. Akaka, Mr. Edwards, Mrs. Feinstein, Ms. 
        Landrieu, Mrs. Boxer, Mr. Cleland, Mr. Kohl, Mr. Wellstone, Mr. 
        Burns, and Mr. Leahy):
  S. 791. A bill to amend the Small Business Act with respect to the 
women's business center program; to the Committee on Small Business.


          women's business centers sustainability act of 1999

  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to introduce the 
Women's Business Centers Sustainability Act of 1999, and I do so on 
behalf of myself and Senators Bond, Harkin, Bingaman, Levin, Enzi, 
Domenici, Abraham, Sarbanes, Akaka, Kennedy, Edwards, Feinstein, 
Landrieu, Boxer, Cleland, Kohl, Wellstone, Burns, and Leahy.
  As the title suggests, this bill addresses the funding constraints 
that are making it increasingly difficult for our women's business 
centers to sustain the level of services that they currently provide 
and, in some instances, to literally keep the doors open.
  Some colleagues may ask the question, What is the Women's Business 
Center Program? The Small Business Administration started the Women's 
Business Center Program which provides 5-year grants matched by non-
Federal dollars to private sector organizations so that they can 
establish business training centers for women. Depending on the needs 
of the community being served, the centers teach women the basic 
principles of finance, management, and marketing, as well as 
specialized topics such as how to get a government contract or how to 
start a home-based business.
  These business centers are located in rural, urban, and suburban 
areas, and they direct much of their training and counseling assistance 
towards socially

[[Page S3696]]

and economically disadvantaged women.
  I might add, Mr. President, of all the changes in the social 
structure of the United States or in the marketplace in the last years, 
none has been more profound than the significant numbers of women 
entering the marketplace. As more and more women enter the marketplace 
and they assume roles as principal breadwinners or sole breadwinners 
within some families, it is more and more important that they have the 
capacity to participate fully in the economy and not be relegated 
simply to entry-level jobs.
  Congress started this program in 1988 in response to hearings that 
revealed the Federal Government was not meeting the needs of women 
entrepreneurs and that there were very little other mechanisms for 
entry-level women entrepreneurs. Women faced particular discrimination 
in access to credit and capital, and they were shut out of many 
government contracts and had very little access to the kind of business 
assistance that they needed to compete in the marketplace. We have 
really come a long way since that first beginning. There are now 59 
centers in 36 States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.
  In addition to increasing self-sufficiency among women, the women's 
business centers have strengthened women business ownership overall and 
encouraged local job creation.
  The numbers really tell a remarkable story, Mr. President. In 1998, 
women-owned businesses made up more than one-third of the 23 million 
small businesses in the United States. They have accounted for some $3 
trillion in annual revenues to the economy, and they employed one out 
of every four workers in the United States.
  Still, according to the data from the 1998 Women's Economic Summit, 
women-owned businesses account for only 18 percent of all small 
business gross receipts, and they are dramatically underrepresented in 
the Nation's two most lucrative markets--corporate buying and 
government contracting.
  This really underscores significantly the problem that I talked about 
a moment ago of entry-level jobs and of the nature of the small, 
entrepreneurial, home-grown, cottage-industry-type businesses that 
women begin with, which often could be grown significantly into larger 
businesses but for the lack of credit, the lack of available marketing 
skills, and the lack of management skills. Clearly, the need for 
women's business centers continues, and this is no time for us to 
diminish or to dismantle the infrastructure that the federal government 
has invested in for the past decade.

  Addressing the special needs of women-owned businesses serves not 
just the entrepreneurs, but it serves the overall strength of 
communities, as well as the economy of the whole of our country. 
Women's business centers help increase the growth, not just of women's 
businesses, but also of the large network of support businesses that 
are linked and affiliated with them, as well as, obviously, the general 
economy and the local community associated with those businesses.
  There are many extraordinarily run centers around the country. Let me 
highlight two of them--one in New Mexico and one in Massachusetts. I 
know my colleagues, Senators Bingaman and Domenici, are particularly 
proud of the one in their home State. I am very proud of one in 
Massachusetts which has been a model women's business center. It is the 
Center of Women & Enterprise in Boston. Since 1995, that center has 
served more than 2,000 women from more than 100 cities and towns in 
eastern Massachusetts. Of the women it serves every year, 60 percent 
are low-income, 70 percent are single, and 32 percent are women of 
color.
  Andrea Silbert is the tireless executive director of that center. She 
has effectively raised money, forged partnerships, and designed 
thorough training and mentoring programs to help women entrepreneurs.
  When the Boston women's business center trains an entrepreneur, that 
entrepreneur then knows how to approach a lender for a loan, knows how 
to manage her business, and understands the ins and outs and hows and 
whys of marketing.
  But notwithstanding the success of these several women's business 
centers, the fact is that a number of them around the country are 
facing increased difficulty in raising the required matching funds.
  There are some people who think the centers should charge higher 
fees. And they might think so, until you examine the makeup of the 
people who are being reached by the centers. We were privileged to have 
a person by the name of Agnes Noonan, who has spent the last 8 years as 
the executive director of WESST Corporation, the women's business 
center in Albuquerque, NM, testify before us in the Small Business 
Committee. As she testified in March, during her first couple of years 
running the center, her view was that there was a very simple way to 
deal with the problem of raising money, and that was to do a better job 
of marketing the center's services to women who could afford to pay 
higher fees. That would increase the center's income, and it would 
reduce its reliance on public dollars.
  But the problem is that the minute you do that, you start redirecting 
the energy and focus of the center away from the people who most 
benefit from it. And that is precisely what she told us as a 
practitioner. She said:

       Though [such a] strategy may have made economic sense, it 
     conflicted directly with our mission of serving low-income 
     women. . . . If we were to target our services to women 
     who could afford to pay market consulting and training 
     rates, then we would clearly not be addressing the needs 
     of low-income women in New Mexico.

  She also gave us important information about the realities of 
fundraising:

       Nationally, only six percent of foundation money is 
     earmarked for women, and only a tiny portion of that goes to 
     women's economic development.

  So as she said to us, the executive directors of women's business 
centers are very experienced fundraisers. Lori Smith of the WBC in 
Oklahoma City said before the House Small Business Committee that she 
thought she could sell sand in the desert. She viewed herself as good a 
fundraiser and as good a salesperson as there is, but she also said 
that competition for foundation- and private-sector dollars has become 
so intense and those dollars so much scarcer with each year that 
Government funding has diminished. And they do not have anywhere to 
turn.
  In addition to that, bank mergers are occurring, as we know, at an 
increased rate around the country. And those mergers are further 
exacerbating the situation because the banks have been a primary source 
of funds for many of these centers.
  Take the example of the recently announced bank merger in Boston of 
Fleet Bank and BankBoston. Those banks separately have been very 
generous to the women's business center in Boston. Their combined 
contribution came to $150,000. But we have serious concerns that their 
full support continue, and not reduce as we have seen in other States, 
where the merged institutions rarely give the same amount of money as 
the two or three, or whatever number, that the prior institutions 
contributed. So we have seen a drying up of some of the funding 
sources, I might add, not just for the women's business centers but for 
a host of charitable institutions that rely on those contributions.
  So for many of the centers, they now have the added specter of losing 
their annual base of money. We need to guarantee that we do not add to 
that ominous cloud by having the base that came from the SBA also 
disappear at the same time when they come to the end of the original 5-
year grant cycle. That money is their basic bread and butter, it is 
their ability to stay alive, as well as the indispensable ingredient of 
leveraging for additional fundraising dollars.
  I believe, and the colleagues who have joined me in introducing this 
legislation believe, that it is essential for us to find a fair way to 
let the women's business centers recompete for their base funding. That 
is competition; it is not entitlement.
  So here is how the legislation we introduce gets us there.
  First, it allows the women's business centers which have completed a 
funding term to compete for another 5 years of Federal funding, which, 
under current policy, would be up to $150,000 per year. The 
recompetition standards would be higher than those needed for centers 
applying for funds for their initial 5-year funding term. This 
recognizes that more experienced centers ought to be able to perform 
well from

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the beginning of their second term funding; they have been through the 
learning curve. And I believe this additional Federal funding is 
necessary to counteract the adverse impact of bank and corporate 
mergers I mentioned previously.
  Second, my bill will raise the authorization of appropriations for 
fiscal year 2000 and fiscal year 2001 for women's business center 
funding from $11 million to $12 million per year. It will also reserve 
40 percent of those appropriations for recompetition grants.
  I believe that increasing the authorization to $12 million is 
entirely consistent with the legislation which our committee passed 
last year, and it would ensure that there would be adequate funding to 
preserve effective, established centers and to help fund new centers in 
States that do not have one.
  Mr. President, I thank those colleagues who have joined me in this 
effort. I hope additional colleagues will join in support of this 
legislation and we can rapidly pass it. It should not be contentious. 
We are not talking about vast sums of money, but we are talking about 
an extraordinary amount of leverage for a very small investment.
  I think that in most States in this country my colleagues will agree 
with me that opening the doors of opportunity to full business 
ownership and participation, particularly to those who have been 
disadvantaged for various reasons, is of enormous importance to the 
longer term economic well-being of our country. And when I say ``well-
being,'' I am not just talking about the bottom line in terms of the 
return on investment to those businesses, I am talking, obviously, 
about the enormous importance of strengthening families, strengthening 
communities, and eliminating the vestiges of discrimination that remain 
against women in terms of their full economic participation in the 
Nation.
  I ask unanimous consent that the full text of the Women's Business 
Centers Sustainability Act be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the bill was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                                 S. 791

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

       This Act may be cited as the ``Women's Business Centers 
     Sustainability Act of 1999''.

     SEC. 2. WOMEN'S BUSINESS CENTER PROGRAM.

       (a) In General.--Section 29 of the Small Business Act (15 
     U.S.C. 656) is amended by adding at the end the following:
       ``(l) Eligibility For Additional Assistance.--
       ``(1) In general.--Subject to paragraph (2), a private 
     organization that has received financial assistance under 
     this section pursuant to a grant, contract, or cooperative 
     agreement, and that is in the final year of a 5-year project 
     or that has completed a project financed under this section 
     (or any predecessor to this section), may apply for financial 
     assistance for an additional 5-year project under this 
     section.
       ``(2) Conditions for participation.--Notwithstanding any 
     other provision of this section, as a condition of receiving 
     financial assistance authorized by this subsection, an 
     organization described in paragraph (1)--
       ``(A) shall meet such requirements as the Administration 
     shall establish to promote the viability and success of the 
     program under this section, in addition to the requirements 
     set forth in this section; and
       ``(B) shall agree to obtain, after its application has been 
     approved and notice of award has been issued, cash 
     contributions from non-Federal sources for each year of 
     additional program participation in an amount equal to 1 non-
     Federal dollar for each Federal dollar.''.
       (b) Authorization of Appropriations.--Section 29(k) of the 
     Small Business Act (15 U.S.C. 656(k)) is amended by striking 
     paragraph (1) and inserting the following:
       ``(1) In general.--There is authorized to be appropriated 
     $12,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2000 and 2001 to carry 
     out the projects authorized under this section, of which, in 
     each fiscal year, not more than 40 percent may be used to 
     carry out projects funded under subsection (l).''.

  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I am pleased to be an original cosponsor of 
the Women's Business Centers Sustainability Act of 1999. This 
legislation will strengthen SBA's women's business centers in Michigan 
and across the Nation which help entrepreneurs start and maintain 
successful businesses by providing such things as start-up help and 
financial expertise to women-owned businesses. This legislation will 
allow those women's business centers that are already successfully 
participating in the program to recompete for Federal funding after 
their initial funding term expires.
  Under this legislation, the recompetition standards would be set 
higher than those used for centers applying for their initial five-year 
funding term. The ability of established and successful women's 
business development centers to continue to compete for Federal funding 
means that critical resources will continue to be made available for 
women-owned businesses for such purposes as training and obtaining 
business financing.
  Women-owned businesses are the fastest growing sector of small 
businesses in America and provide innumerable jobs and resources to the 
state of Michigan. Michigan has two women's business centers, the 
Center for Empowerment and Economic Development (CEED) in Ann Arbor and 
the Grand Rapids Opportunities for Women (GROW) in Grand Rapids. We 
also have Project Invest in Traverse City which is a women's business 
center affiliate. In addition, a Center is currently being set up in 
Detroit.
  These Michigan programs offer women a comprehensive package of 
business education and training, start-up financing, technical 
assistance, peer group support and access to community and government 
supportive resources such as child care. Michigan's women's business 
centers are supportive of this legislation and believe it is necessary 
in order for them to continue to be able to offer the current levels of 
services and support to Michigan's women-owned businesses.
  I am pleased that Congress has recognized the importance of funding 
the women's business center program. In 1997, Congress enacted 
legislation to make the 1991 pilot project a permanent part of the 
Small Business Administration programs available to help entrepreneurs 
start and maintain successful business. It also doubled the annual 
funding of the women's business centers and extended the funding period 
from 3 to 5 years. And just this year, Congress enacted legislation to 
change the non-Federal and Federal funding ratio requirements and it 
again increased the annual authorization level from $8 million to $11 
million.
  The legislation being introduced today by my colleague from 
Massachusetts, Mr. Kerry, in addition to allowing existing women's 
business centers to compete for additional Federal funding, will also 
increase the authorized appropriations for fiscal year 2000 and fiscal 
year 2001 from $11 million to $12 million for this program.
  Mr. KENNEDY. I strongly support the Women's Business Centers 
Sustainability Act of 1999. Its goal is to provide disadvantaged women 
with the opportunity to obtain the training and counseling necessary to 
become successful small business owners.
  Today, the Nation's entrepreneurial spirit is thriving. Small 
business has become the engine that drives the economy. America's 23 
million small businesses employ more than 50 percent of the private 
workforce, generate more than half of the nation's gross domestic 
product, and are the principal source of new jobs in the U.S. economy. 
The increase in the number of small businesses owned by women has 
significantly contributed to the overall success of small business.
  Between 1987 and 1996, the number of women-owned firms has grown by78 
percent. Employment in women-owned firms more than doubled from 1987 to 
1992, compared to an increase of 38 percent in employment by all firms. 
For women-owned companies with 100 or more workers, employment has 
increased by 158 percent--more than twice the rate for all U.S. firms 
of similar size. Women entrepreneurs are taking their firms into the 
global marketplace at the same rate as all U.S. business owners.
  Today, women are starting new firms at twice the rate of all other 
business and own nearly 40 percent of all firms in the United States. 
These 8 million firms employ 18.5 million people--one in every five 
U.S. workers--and contribute $2.3 trillion to the economy. The Small 
Business Administration has created programs, such as the women's 
business centers, which have been very effective in promoting woman 
business ownership. We must ensure that these programs continue to 
receive strong support in Congress.
  The Women's Business Centers Sustainability Act of 1999 will provide 
the

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funds necessary to continue this successful program. It will allow 
women's business centers that have completed five year funding to apply 
for additional funding, and it will also increase the authorization for 
FY 2000 and FY 2001 from $11 million to $12 million a year. Our goal is 
to help sustain existing centers, while continuing to create new 
centers.
  I urge all of my colleagues to support this important legislation, 
and I look forward to its early enactment.
  Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I rise for the second year in a row as an 
original co-sponsor of legislation increasing the authorization for the 
Small Business Administration women's business center program. These 
centers provide important management, marketing, and financial advice 
to women-owned small businesses.
  Mr. President, this program finances a number of very important 
initiatives at the state and local levels; measures that have proven 
crucial to women struggling to enter the job world and to start their 
own businesses. These initiatives have changed the lives of a 
significant number of women in Michigan and throughout the United 
States.
  For example, two women's business centers in Michigan are leading the 
way toward preparing and advancing women in the business field. Ann 
Arbor's Women's Initiative for Self-Employment, or WISE, program 
provides low-income women with the tools and resources they need to 
begin and expand businesses. The WISE program also provides a 
comprehensive package of business training, personal development 
workshops, credit counseling, start-up and expansion financing, 
business counseling and mentoring. In addition, Grand Rapids' 
Opportunities for Women, or GROW, provides career counseling and 
training for women in western Michigan. GROW provides essential job 
preparedness with basic business training and assistance in obtaining 
more specialized instruction.
  Mr. President, I salute the good people at WISE and GROW for their 
hard work in helping the women of Michigan. These programs create and 
expand business opportunities, fight against poverty, increase incomes, 
stabilize families, develop skills, and spark community renewal. If we 
are to maintain and increase revitalization of troubled areas and the 
empowerment of women we must continue to provide targeted funding for 
these types of assistance programs.
  For these reasons, I support the Women's Business Centers 
Sustainability Act of 1999. Because the Small Business Administration's 
women's business centers program makes it possible for women to build 
productive lives for themselves and their families, I believe it 
deserves the increased funding it needs to expand its services. I urge 
my colleagues to support this important bill.
                                 ______