[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 114 (Tuesday, July 17, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9296-S9299]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
UNANIMOUS-CONSENT REQUEST--S. 163
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate
proceed to Calendar No. 139, S. 163; that the committee-reported
amendment be withdrawn, and I have a substitute amendment at the desk;
that the Bond amendment to the substitute amendment be considered and
agreed to, the substitute amendment, as amended, be agreed to, the
motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that the bill, as
amended, be read the third time; that the Senate then proceed to the
consideration of H.R. 1361, the House companion, which is at the desk;
that all after the enacting clause be stricken and the text of S. 163,
as amended, be inserted in lieu thereof; that the bill be read the
third time, passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the
table; that the Senate insist on its amendment and request a conference
with the House on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses; that the
Chair be authorized to appoint conferees, with the Committee on Small
Business and Entrepreneurship appointed as conferees; that S. 163 be
returned to the calendar, and the above occurring without intervening
action or debate.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there objection?
Mr. DeMINT. On behalf of the Senator from Oklahoma, I object.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Objection is heard.
The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, let me speak for a minute about this
legislation. I understand Senator DeMint's need to object on behalf of
the Senator from Oklahoma. This is legislation that has broad--I do
mean broad--bipartisan support. It was passed out of the Small Business
and Entrepreneurship Committee on a unanimous vote. It now represents a
very broad compromise worked on with the administration and with all of
the members of the committee, both Republican and Democrat.
I will review very quickly what this bill does. As everybody knows,
when Katrina hit, we had a terrible time getting small business
assistance to the countless thousands of small businesses that were
impacted, not only in New Orleans but in Baton Rouge and across into
Mississippi, Alabama, and elsewhere, where there were many services
being provided by other folks. A lot of small businesses were impacted.
We learned there was not an adequate capacity within the Small
Business Administration to deliver this kind of assistance in a rapid
way. So we have worked now, after a series of hearings and over the
course of 2 years, to pull together the Small Business Disaster
Response and Loan Improvement Act. It does a number of things.
It creates a new elevated level of disaster declaration, referred to
as catastrophic national disaster. That triggers nationwide economic
injury disaster loans for adversely affected small businesses.
In addition, it requires the SBA to create an expedited disaster
assistance business loan program to provide businesses with expedited
access to short-term money.
A lot of the businesses in New Orleans could have survived and might
have survived or chosen to try to if there had been some bridge money
or available working capital. But the absence of it forced a lot of
them to close their doors. If we can provide assistance in a timely
fashion, obviously subject to the administration's approval--and there
is discretion in the bill--we would have the ability to do a better
job.
In addition, there are improvements to the existing loan program
which have been written in the bill. There is improved agency
coordination and marketing. It directs the SBA to coordinate with FEMA
in a more effective way. It directs the SBA to create a proactive
marketing plan to make the public aware of the disaster response
services.
[[Page S9297]]
In addition, it provides improved planning and oversight and directs
the SBA to update the hurricane response plan to address all future
disasters.
This is, as I say, with bipartisan support. I have a letter from the
Administrator of the SBA, Steve Preston. He writes saying:
I am writing to express my thanks for the efforts you and
your colleagues have made to work with the Small Business
Administration and to address the administration's concerns
with some of the provisions in S. 163, the Small Business
Disaster Response and Loan Improvement Act of 2007. At this
point, if amended by the Bond amendment--
And that is what we just sought to do--
the administration has no objections to Senate passage of S.
163. However, the administration would consider a longer
extension of the authorization language in section 3 to avoid
the need for concern over unintended expiration of programs
and activities.
We would obviously love to do that. It appears there is one person in
the Senate, the Senator from Oklahoma, who is opposed to moving forward
with this legislation. As I say, there was a unanimous vote by our
committee, which wants to see if we could achieve this disaster
assistance. Nobody understands how critical this is more than the
Senator from Louisiana, Ms. Landrieu, who has been fighting from the
moment Katrina hit to try to get this kind of disaster assistance.
I wish to ask the Senator if she would share with us her observations
as to why this legislation is so critical and what specifically we have
done to address some of the concerns of those who had previously
expressed those concerns in order now to have a consensus about this
legislation. I ask the Senator from Louisiana if she would explain the
situation in New Orleans, not just then but now, and why this
legislation is so critical.
Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts.
I begin by saying that his leadership has been on point and so focused
for the last 2 years in trying to help lead his committee, with the
support and cooperation of his ranking member, the Senator from Maine,
Ms. Snowe, to move Congress to adopt this important legislation.
The Senator is absolutely correct that the SBA was one of several
important Federal agencies that was caught flatfooted when Katrina and
Rita hit the gulf coast and subsequently when the Federal levee system
failed in multiple places, as the Senator from Massachusetts knows
because he has walked through neighborhood after neighborhood, mile
after mile, having visited with business owners and homeowners who lost
everything they had, that took them generations to build. The Senator
knows very well that this particular administration was anemic and very
slow in its response. In fact, the gentleman leading it at the time was
not the appropriate leader. To the President's credit, they have
nominated and we have confirmed a new leader for the SBA.
I think the Senator from Massachusetts will agree with me that the
Director, Steve Preston, is making some very good and fundamental
changes. But there is just so much this administrator can do without
Congress doing its job to give him the tools he needs to get the job
done.
Why this legislation is being held up by the Republican side I am not
sure. It is very disappointing, not just to me but to the millions of
people who are affected and are still struggling, having lost
everything or having at risk everything they own because we cannot seem
to get legislation passed because of obstructionist tactics.
I repeat, this bill is supported not only by the Chair but by the
ranking member. In addition, both Senators from Louisiana are
cosponsoring this bill, Senator Bill Nelson from Florida, who has
experienced the disasters of hurricanes in Florida, and Senator Johnny
Isakson from Georgia, who also has experienced disasters. This is not a
Democratic bill being rammed down the Republican side of the aisle.
This is a good Government efficiency, effective measure to try to
reform the SBA. But because of bureaucratic delays, because of the
inadequacy of the current law, we were not able to help the 18,000
businesses that were destroyed, many of them--I would say 97 percent of
them--small businesses.
The Senator from Massachusetts and I together visited a cleaning
business for hospital bedding and other items that was--I cannot think
of the name of the business, but the Senator from Massachusetts and I
walked throughout New Orleans East. This is one of hundreds of
businesses that not only found themselves flooded, but when the waters
receded, the hospitals they had serviced had closed. So basically
through no fault of their own, they were struggling as well. This
legislation will help them.
This is not only important to the gulf coast and to the 18,000
businesses, many of them small businesses, that need help and
assistance, but it is for the future. The Senator from Massachusetts is
saying let this Federal Government do better. If we believe business is
important, and we do, and if we believe small business is important,
and it is, then let's at least have our response honed and tuned to the
point where if, God forbid, another huge disaster happens, we will be
much more prepared than we were last time.
Our constituents depend on us to be responsive. I say to the Senator
from Massachusetts, that is exactly what this bill does. I again thank
him for his leadership and express truly my outrage that this is being
held up for no apparent good reason at the expense of thousands of
business owners who are looking to us for help and support.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Louisiana. She has
been not only a terrific member of the committee but has represented to
the whole Senate countless numbers of times on the floor the plight of
those folks down in New Orleans and in the immediate surrounding area.
I wish to emphasize what she has said and what I said previously, and
that is this has been worked on now for 2 years in a bipartisan way.
Senator Snowe, the ranking member, who was, incidentally, the Chair
when we first began working on this legislation, has supported the
efforts to try to make certain that we address these concerns. Other
Republican members of the committee have contributed significantly to
this effort. Senator Bond had concerns about the energy program. We
have addressed those concerns.
I hope we can move forward. We tried actually to reach out to
whatever opposition there is with respect to this bill. We are happy to
sit down and address any legitimate concerns. But at this point, this
is long overdue. We are into the hurricane season now, about a month
and a half into it. Our predictors have been pretty accurate in these
past years, and they are suggesting we are going to have a very
significant number of named storms and maybe as many as 10 projected
full-blown hurricanes this year, with 13 to 17 named storms.
Last year, they hit the number of named storms and hurricanes, but we
were very lucky; they didn't blow into the shore and we didn't get hit.
Obviously, we cannot sit around and be lucky all the time. We cannot
afford another Katrina-like response. There are specific actions this
legislation empowers the SBA to do to take steps proactively, to be in
a position to address the concerns of small businesses rapidly. In
addition, this bill helps private lenders get in early on and be
immediately on the scene and assist in the process of providing those
loans. So it streamlines that process.
I wish to comment on Senator Landrieu's reference to that cleaning
place we visited in East New Orleans. We made arrangements to go down
and see that place because we knew it needed help. We had talked with
the CEO before going there. About a week and a half later, when we got
there, we went into this cleaning facility, which had been completely
flooded, as the Senator said. They cleaned it out themselves. They
worked diligently to get the equipment up and working, what they could.
Much of it was ruined and was going to have to be disposed of. But
these folks were working this place.
Since they were dependent on the services of hotels and others for
the work they did, they were at the time mostly doing the hospitals
that had reopened, and that was it. But the CEO was so despairing in
the span of that week and a half or so between our making the
appointment and getting there that when we arrived, the CEO had left
with his family, taken off; that was it, he had enough, and left in
charge was one of the workers who was the ``acting CEO'' who was
desperately trying to hold onto this business.
[[Page S9298]]
When people are working like that and run into that kind of
desperation, we have to be able to look them in the eye and say we have
done everything possible. We put in place the mechanisms they pay for
and that they have a right to expect will be there to assist in that
kind of an emergency. That is what we are trying to do here, in a
bipartisan way, to make certain we don't lose CEOs, lose jobs, lose
workers, and lose hope as a consequence of our inaction in the
Senate. So I hope we are going to be able to come back to this in short
order. As I say, I think we have worked in good faith with every
legitimate question that has been raised with respect to this
legislation. We will happily sit down if another Senator still has a
concern, but we certainly will not tolerate--and at some point I hope
the leader will allow us to take the time in the Senate to continue on
the floor with this legislation. There is one Senator who is opposing
it, without any rationale whatsoever.
Ms. LANDRIEU. May I add something, if the Senator will yield?
Mr. KERRY. I will yield to the Senator.
Ms. LANDRIEU. We have all learned many things since this disaster
happened, and one of the things we have learned, I guess rather
painfully, is that it is not only the geographic area that is struck by
the high wind, the high waters or the flood waters that is impacted by
a catastrophic disaster, but it is also the perimeter of the area, the
towns that absorb people fleeing to higher ground and trying to settle
where they can find work and schools for their children, and businesses
that might not have been directly impacted but have lost half or 75
percent of their customer base.
Right now, without Senator Kerry's bill, there is virtually no
authorization on the Federal books to allow loans to be made to these
kinds of businesses. So because we don't have that authorization, we
are, right now, basically making the disaster worse. I hope people can
understand this. We, by our inaction, by our hardheadedness--and it is
not me, although I can be hardheaded but not on this issue--because of
some leadership decision on the Republican side, we are literally,
right now, making this matter worse. Businesses are continuing to go
out of business; businesses that didn't have a drop of water,
businesses that didn't have one shingle let loose from the high wind
continue to file bankruptcy and put up out-of-business signs because
there is no provision to allow low-interest loans to them if they
weren't directly impacted. Unfortunately, they are directly impacted in
terms of loss of customers, et cetera.
In addition, it is going to bring in the private sector. We heard a
lot from the other side about Government can't do everything; let the
private sector be engaged. Well, your bill allows for more private-
sector involvement; does it not? It allows the banks that know these
small businesses to be a part of helping them. This is what the
business community wants, this is what the banks want, and this is what
we recognized was a problem initially.
Yet we are being blocked, I understand, by the Senator from Oklahoma,
who has not made his specific objections clear to us. So I hope they
can be made clear, and if we can fix it, fine. If not, then the
leadership on the Republican side, I would say to the Senator from
Massachusetts, has a decision: Do they want to be part of the
nonsensical opposition by a Senator who is in Oklahoma, who is never
going to have a hurricane or do they want to stand with the people in
America from New York to Texas who are threatened every 9 months with a
hurricane season.
That is the decision the Republican leader from Kentucky is going to
have to answer. Is he going to support a bipartisan piece of
legislation that aids businesses that are literally threatened from New
York to Texas or is he going to stand with some nonsensical opposition
coming from the middle of the country that will never be hit by a
hurricane.
I hate to be so pointed about it, but that is basically where it is.
This is 2 years after the storm. This isn't 2 months or 6 months after.
This is a bill that Senator Snowe herself started and Senator Kerry is
finishing, and the people of the gulf coast are still waiting. So this
is a real leadership question, and I hope that as the day goes by and
the week goes by, we can make some progress, and I thank the Senator
for his leadership.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Louisiana. As I
said previously, she has been tireless on this. Louisiana has been
lucky to have her intervention every step of the way. The billions of
dollars that have gone down there is a consequence of the hard work she
has done.
Let me summarize what is being obstructed. First, expedited
assistance from the SBA to small businesses injured by a disaster;
second, private disaster loans. Private disaster loans. The ability of
private-sector lenders to become involved in the process quickly,
extending credit to the folks who need it as a consequence of that
disaster, which, incidentally, can only occur when the President of the
United States has legitimately declared a disaster; third, improvements
to the existing program; why we wouldn't want to improve the existing
program after we saw how it was incapable of meeting the problems of
Katrina is beyond me. That is what we are doing here in a complete and
total bipartisan, unanimous committee vote that suggests these
improvements are important and will make a difference; improved agency
coordination in marketing. These are the things that make a difference.
When you can get the bureaucracy out of the way, when you can
streamline, you are getting better production for the taxpayers'
dollars, and that is exactly what we are doing; improved planning and
oversight and disaster assistance staffing, necessary to be able to
deliver the services because we didn't have sufficient personnel to be
able to process the loan requests that came in.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record
a letter from the Small Business Administrator, Steve Preston.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
U.S. Small Business Administration,
Washington, DC, June 29, 2007.
Hon. John F. Kerry,
Chairman, Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship,
U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
Dear Mr. Chairman: I am writing to express my thanks for
the efforts you and your colleagues have made to work with
the U.S. Small Business Administration and to address the
Administration's concerns with some of the provisions in S.
163, ``The Small Business Disaster Response and Loan
Improvements Act of 2007''.
At this point, if amended by the Bond Amendment, the
Administration has no objections to Senate passage of S. 163.
However, the Administration would request a longer extension
of the authorization language in section 3 to avoid the need
for concern over unintended expiration of programs and
activities. We would also recommend clarifying that the
Administrator would have flexibility under section 205 to
designate portions of a declared catastrophic national
disaster area as a HUBZone area, without extending this
designation to an entire disaster area.
We look forward to working with you when the bill goes into
conference discussions with the U.S. House of
Representatives. If you have any questions or comments,
please contact me directly.
Sincerely yours,
Steven C. Preston.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the
absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to
speak for 20 minutes as in morning business.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I further ask unanimous consent that the
next Democratic Speaker be Senator Kennedy of Massachusetts; with the
understanding that if a Republican Member wishes to speak, they would
be permitted to do so between any majority speakers.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there objection?
Mr. McCAIN. I object. My understanding is that at 11 a.m., we were
[[Page S9299]]
supposed to go to the bill. We are now, at 11:15, going to go to the
bill, and then we want the regular procedure as we consider
legislation, which would be whoever has the right of recognition and
any unanimous consent agreements.
So I object to the second unanimous consent request.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Objection is heard.
The Senator from Connecticut.
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