[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 117 (Wednesday, August 4, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6724-S6727]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Small Business

  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I understand we are in controlled time. 
I will speak for the next 10 minutes, and if someone else comes to the 
floor, I will be happy to yield.
  I know the discussion today has primarily been on our new potential 
Supreme Court nominee, but that is not why I have come to the floor. I 
have come to the floor to talk about an issue I have spent a good bit 
of time talking about in the last several weeks--particularly the last 
week--and that is the issue most Americans have on their minds right 
now, and that is, when is this recession going to end? That is a good 
question. My answer to that is that this recession is going to end as 
soon as we can get Main Street moving again.
  The First Lady has been so wonderful in her advocacy to help 
Americans understand the importance of activity and moving, with her 
campaign ``Let's Move,'' to help us all get into better shape--
particularly the young children of our country. I think we can really 
use almost that same slogan for Main Street--to get Main Street moving 
again, percolating again, and generating jobs, because that is the only 
way this recession is going to end. We can pass bill after bill up here 
regarding big bank bailouts, saving the big auto manufacturers. We can 
step up and send money to big, troubled banks. But until we figure out 
a way to get money to Main Street, this recession is going to be with 
us a long time.
  I think that is really what is on people's minds, at least in 
Louisiana, my home State, the places with which I am very familiar. Our 
situation in Louisiana is even more complicated, and right now I am not 
going to take the opportunity--but I will before this session ends--to 
talk about the gulf coast disaster and the moratorium that has been 
placed on drilling in the gulf, which has exacerbated our problem. 
Suffice it to say that on Main Street all over America, people are 
wondering--we know that Supreme Court Justices are important, that 
health care is important, and we know that stabilizing the financial 
situation is important.
  When is Congress going to focus on Main Street and small business? 
That is what our bill, the small business lending bill and particularly 
the small business lending fund, does.
  I want to start the first few minutes of this discussion--there will 
be some Members coming down to the floor--by reading an e-mail I 
received in my office 2 days ago. This e-mail was so well written and 
so passionate and so encouraging to me that I was afraid it was not 
real. I actually had my staff call the man who wrote it to make sure 
before I came to the floor of the Senate, because I did not want to be 
fooled or embarrassed by someone sending some kind of form e-mail and 
not being sure it was correct.
  I want my colleagues to know that we called Mr. Bryan Gipson, Sr. I 
am going to read his e-mail because I think this says better than I 
could what is at stake for those who have tried to obstruct this bill, 
unfortunately, for many of my friends on the other side:

       Dear Senator Landrieu, I wanted to start this e-mail by 
     telling you I am a life long Republican and a former member 
     of your district. I currently reside in Ocean Springs, 
     Mississippi, and I am a Commercial Real Estate Broker. I 
     watched with great interest today as the Senate debated H.R. 
     5297, the Small Business Jobs Credit Act. I was very, very 
     disappointed by the unjustified stonewalling of the 
     Republicans. To think that a Bill, whose only purpose is to 
     provide funding for small business, create jobs and help the 
     most battered segment of our economy recover from the worst 
     recession of all time could be held up because one side had 
     their feelings hurt because they don't have enough amendments 
     is sickening.
       Senator Landrieu, I am a commercial real estate broker. My 
     company sells hotels, throughout the southeastern United 
     States. We have not completed a transaction in almost two 
     years. There is no third party commercial financing for 
     commercial real [estate] in the United States today our 
     industry has been battered because of this. Hotels are 
     closing through out this country and workers are being laid 
     off. These workers make beds and clean rooms. They work as 
     wait staff, accountants, reservationists, and front desk 
     personnel. Thousands of these hard working Americans have 
     been laid off. It's time for Congress to do something to put 
     Americans back to work on the jobs.
       As I said, I am a life long Republican. I was sick to my 
     stomach to see the leadership of the Republican Party do 
     everything in their power to kill this bill. Please remind 
     them they have lost my vote. I will do everything in my power 
     to defeat my two Republican Senators when election time 
     comes. It is plain to see the Senators of the Republican 
     Party are holding the American economy and it's workers 
     hostage for selfish, partisan politics, and the American 
     voters are tired of it.

  I will not read his last sentence because I do not think it is 
appropriate for the Senate.
  Today I had the opportunity to speak with one of the region's most 
outstanding community bankers by phone. My phone call was prompted by a 
roundtable I held earlier this week--it was not yesterday but the day 
before--with some of the country's most outstanding entrepreneurs. I 
had several individuals from Louisiana--surprising to many people. You 
may be surprised to know that New Orleans, LA, has been on the front 
cover of Entrepreneurial magazine twice in the last year because after 
Katrina, some of the leaders, including myself, had the sense to say: 
We are not going to build back just what we had; we are going to build 
back better and stronger, and part of that is inspiring young people 
around the country to come and start new businesses in New Orleans and 
help us build a greater city and a better region.
  We also had individuals from all parts of the United States. One of 
the two most interesting individuals who owns arguably the most famous 
small business in America today, Georgetown Cupcake, better known as DC 
Cupcakes, the reality show--Sophie and Katherine were in my committee 2 
days ago. I want to tell you what they said, and nobody is going to 
believe it. There is a transcript of this record.
  This is one of the most famous, most popular small businesses in 
America. They have their own reality show. They testified to my 
committee that they could not themselves get a business loan. They 
knocked on bank after bank until finally a community banker--the 
chairman of the bank is Ron Paul. I spoke with him today. It is 
EagleBank right in this region. They finally gave them a loan which 
they paid back in 3 months. For 2 years they used every credit card 
they had. They used their entire savings. Even with a line 2 blocks 
long--if anyone in Washington, DC, doesn't know about it, they should 
know about it. I have not been there, but my children have been there. 
They ask me to take them there all the time. The line is 2 blocks long, 
I hear, every night.
  If a small business not 10 minutes from the Capitol, with a line 2 
blocks long, cannot get a loan from a bank and has to go through all 
this trouble--but they finally, thank goodness, found a community bank 
to lend them the money--do I have to say anymore about what we are 
trying to do?
  Another young woman showed up in our committee. She graduated magna 
cum laude from Duke University. She received a scholarship from the 
Fulbright Scholarship Program. She went to Sri Lanka to work for a year 
under the Fulbright Scholarship Program. Her idea as a scholar was that 
maybe she could create a business using environmentally sensitive 
methods and practices designing very fashionable clothes that she could 
then sell to college students because our college students today are 
much more sensitive to the environment and to these sorts of things 
than we were when we were in college.
  She had a very brilliant idea. She had a great market. She went to 
bank after bank with $250,000 worth of purchase orders and could not 
get a loan and does not have one today.
  If our young people who are graduating at the very top of their 
class, who have the most extraordinary ability to create jobs in 
America, cannot get money in their hands, we should close these doors 
and turn these lights off because it is never going to get fixed. That 
is what this bill tries to do.
  It has been stopped by petty politics or slowed down considerably. We 
are

[[Page S6725]]

still hoping we can get this done by the other side, which wants to 
pretend this is not important or that the Small Business Lending 
Program that got 60 votes on the floor of the Senate is somehow 
damaging to this bill. It is the heart of this bill.
  I want to use fact versus fiction to clear up another point. I could 
go on and on about what these young entrepreneurs running small but 
extraordinarily exciting businesses said at that roundtable. This bill 
will help them, and we are going to continue to do more.
  One of the things I want to speak about today is fact versus fiction 
about the one article that has criticized us. It was an AP article that 
was written 2 days ago and was circulated in defense of the opposition, 
so I want to take this issue by issue.
  The article was written by Daniel Wagner of Associated Press. When we 
called him, he admitted that he failed to call anyone from our office 
or the Small Business Committee to get any real information about the 
bill. He had not written in an updated way. He had gotten this 
information some months ago. He was frustrated. He couldn't get 
Treasury to respond, so he just wrote the article.
  The problem is half of his article is completely factually wrong 
about this bill. I want to go point by point.
  He comments in his article:

       Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke and others have 
     questioned whether the problem is lack of capital or if there 
     simply are not enough creditworthy borrowers.

  I have given two examples in the last 2 or 3 minutes about 
creditworthy borrowers. I think every Member of Congress knows a dozen 
businesses that are good, solid businesses with good cashflow and a 
good product with a good record that are beiing told they cannot get 
funding. If you do not believe me or what you are hearing back in your 
States, the fact is our Chairman stated last month:

       It seems clear that some creditworthy businesses, including 
     some whose collateral has lost value but whose cash flow 
     remains strong have had difficulty obtaining the credit they 
     need to expand and, in some cases, even continuing to 
     operate.

  Part of the article, quoting the Chairman, is factually wrong. 
Chairman Bernanke did not say that. Chairman Bernanke said what I just 
quoted.
  The second fiction he said was that Congress was at work on a new 
program to send $30 billion to struggling community banks. No, that is 
not what our bill does. We do not send $30 billion to struggling 
community banks. We allow healthy banks, not struggling banks, healthy 
community banks to apply, completely voluntary, for money from the 
Treasury so they can increase the capital they have to lend hopefully 
to wonderful young people such as the two young women who started 
Georgetown Cupcake, now better known nationally as DC Cupcake, and 
other small businesses that are hiring people and increasing their 
locations and starting to bring this recession to an end.
  The facts are that you have to be a healthy bank to apply for this 
program.
  The next thing Mr. Wagner said--and he has retracted this already. We 
appreciate him retracting this statement. He said:

       Under the new program, the 775 banks on the government 
     problem list can qualify for the bailout.

  A, that is not true, it is not a bailout. And B, they are expressly 
prohibited in our bill. The 775 banks on the problem list would be 
ineligible to receive capital. Only the strongest banks, and they are 
registered as CAMELS 1, 2, and 3, not 4 and 5. Finally he said:

       This time the money is more likely to disappear as a result 
     of bank failure and fraud.

  It is not the community banks we have to worry about failing. Their 
record has been extraordinary. In fact, there was not one bank in 2005, 
2006, all the way up to 2007--there were less than a handful of 
community banks that failed. In 2009 and 2010, those numbers shot up 
because of the despicable and reckless policies perpetrated by many big 
banks and international lenders which put the whole economy at risk 
because of what they did, and then that had a ripple effect on our 
economy.
  It is not going to be the small community banks that take this Nation 
down, I can promise my colleagues. It is going to be the small 
community banks and other nonbank lenders in places that have a hard 
time getting the capital they need to expand that are going to lead 
this country out of the recession.
  So I wish to put this up--this ``Party of No''--because, 
unfortunately, we have on the other side an unprecedented number of 
objections. This is the graph that I think Senator Stabenow has used 
for 246 objections. It is one thing, of course, politically, if you 
want to say no to the President. I don't think it is great, but 
sometimes you have to, if you don't believe the President is right. I 
understand that. But to say no to the small businesses of America, most 
of which have done absolutely nothing wrong but try to build their 
businesses and try to expand their businesses? To say no to them is one 
no gone too far.
  I wish to put up the chart about the businesses that will create 
jobs, because if we would spend some time focused on passing this 
bill--and I hope this chart I am using is an effective visual for the 
share of net new jobs by firm--these are our own statistics for 1993 to 
2009. So for the last 16 years, 65 percent of new jobs have come from 
small firms. This goes to show that if we can get this bill--and maybe 
there are others but this bill for certain because it was built with 
bipartisan support. It has $12 billion of tax cuts targeted directly at 
small business. It is a $30 billion small business, healthy bank 
partnership fund that will help spur investments on Main Street, and it 
is an increase of lending limits and loan guarantees through the Small 
Business Administration for their very tested and proven and successful 
lending programs. This bill could have a tremendous impact on Main 
Street throughout America.
  We have only a few more days here. The leaders are still talking 
about what can be worked out. I would suggest we get this bill on the 
floor, we agree to one amendment on both sides, and get this bill 
passed for the American public. I know the Chair has been supportive, 
and I see Senator Cantwell and others on the floor who have been 
arguing successfully and passionately for this bill. When people say we 
need more amendments, this bill has been built with bipartisan 
amendments, section by section--I have said this over and over again--
every section of this bill.
  We call this chart our red-line, four-page outline of this bill. It 
is well known and has been well reviewed by not only Members here but 
staff and reporters as well who can see for themselves. This is a 
Snowe-Landrieu; Crapo-Landrieu-Risch; Snowe-Landrieu; Snowe-Merkley. I 
mean, every single section has been bipartisan, and we now have a 
strong bipartisan vote for the lending program. So all we need is for 
the leaders to agree on one amendment. It could be the 1099 amendment, 
which has generated a great deal of interest around here. Let's make a 
decision about how we move forward with that provision. I think it 
needs to be adjusted or completely repealed, but that is worth 
debating. Let's get that done and move this bill forward.
  In addition, as I yield the floor for the Senator from Washington, we 
continue to receive more and more endorsements. Today, we got a letter 
from the United States Conference of Mayors:

       On behalf of the Nation's mayors, I am writing to thank 
     you, Senator Landrieu, for supporting and sponsoring the 
     Small Business Jobs Act. The U.S. Conference of Mayors firmly 
     supports this legislation and urges all Senators to vote for 
     its immediate passage.

  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
the entire letter.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                                 The United States


                                         Conference of Mayors,

                                   Washington, DC, August 4, 2010.
     Hon. Mary L. Landrieu,
     Chairwoman, Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, 
         U.S. Senate, Senate Russell Office Building, Washington, 
         DC.
       Dear Senator Landrieu: On behalf of the nation's mayors, I 
     am writing to thank you for sponsoring the Small Business 
     Jobs Act of 2010, H.R. 5297. The U.S. Conference of Mayors 
     firmly supports this legislation and urges all Senators to 
     vote for its immediate passage. Mayors believe it will create 
     jobs to help put Americans back to work. It will do

[[Page S6726]]

     so by increasing small business access to credit. You and 
     other supporters of the bill understand that even in these 
     challenging economic times, many small businesses are ready 
     to expand their operations but have not been able to borrow 
     the money they need to move forward. This legislation would 
     assist them by establishing a $30 billion lending pool for 
     small community banks that make loans to small businesses. It 
     also calls for increasing the limits on Small Business 
     Administration (SBA) loans available to small businesses.
       Across our nation many local communities are suffering from 
     double digit unemployment. Every day mayors hear from 
     residents who have lost their jobs. They tell them they don't 
     want a hand out. They just want a decent paying job that will 
     enable them to support their families. Nationally and 
     locally, small businesses provide the vast majority of jobs 
     for local residents. By increasing small business access to 
     credit, this legislation will help create hundreds of 
     thousands of jobs for unemployed residents in local 
     communities across our nation.
       Again, thank you for your support. Mayors stand ready to 
     work with you to ensure the immediate passage of this 
     important legislation. Please feel free to contact me or 
     Larry Jones of my staff if you have any questions.
           Sincerely,
                                                      Tom Cochran,
                                       CEO and Executive Director.

  Ms. LANDRIEU. This recession is a national recession, but you feel it 
in every town, in every community, in every city where mayors and 
Governors out there--Democrats and Republicans--are fighting every day 
to bring vitality back to their communities. This bill has the 
potential to help them, to be some wind under their wings and to get 
this job done.
  So I am proud to have the thousands of mayors in our country who have 
stepped up to support this legislation. I am also proud to have almost 
28, if not 30, Governors who have written personally, sometimes 
numerous letters, to say they support this legislation.
  I have used the time in conclusion to rebut the only article we know 
of that was a negative one. We have had many positive articles and 
editorials, and we are grateful because the bill is self-explanatory. 
The one reporter who wrote, I thought, a very misleading story has 
retracted portions of it, which he admitted were not accurate, and I 
have given the detail to rebut the other sections of his article. But 
we continue to pick up endorsements.
  The bill is bipartisan. We have to get Main Street moving again. When 
we do--and only when we do--will this recession end and our 
constituents can go back to work or they can fulfill their dreams to 
build a business of their own that can employ them and bring security, 
prosperity, and happiness to their families. But this Congress should 
act and we should act now--in the next 24 hours.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I thank the Chair, and I thank the chair 
of the Small Business Committee for her continued advocacy on this 
issue. It is so important for us to help small businesses; that is, if 
you believe they are the engine of economic growth for our economy, as 
I do, and as I think the chairwoman of the Small Business Committee 
does.
  We know 75 percent of new job creation comes from small business. So 
we can continue to talk about the economy, we can continue to debate it 
or we can get down to the business of helping small business, as this 
bill does by outlining three principal programs: tax credits for small 
businesses on depreciation to make new investments; an enhancement of 
the 7(a) and 504 loan programs, which are successful programs for 
lending to small businesses where their capital has fallen off because 
the program ended in June, so we basically have a lot less money for 
small businesses; and a small business lending program that could help 
small businesses grow and help our economy at this critical point in 
time.
  We are here tonight because we only have a few days left, but the 
chair of the Small Business Committee is not giving up on this issue 
and neither am I. I am saying it is important enough for us to stay and 
make sure we get this legislation passed because we want to grow small 
businesses. I know my newspaper, the Seattle Times, had this to say: 
``Nothing should be more nonpartisan than putting people back to 
work.''
  I think that says it all. If you are down to this, a program that 
could help grow small businesses, why would you be partisan at a time 
when our economy has huge unemployment and we have had such stagnant 
growth? Why would you continue being partisan instead of passing this 
legislation?
  In fact, I haven't actually heard people on the other side say if we 
got through the cloture motion that they wouldn't support this 
legislation. No one has come to the floor and said: I will not support 
this legislation with this language in it. In fact, we have kind of had 
people indicate the opposite. So if that is the case, let's have the 
votes. Let's vote on this legislation and let's put people back to 
work.
  One of the important things I wish to talk about is this small 
business bill is a lending program. As somebody said to me today: When 
you can't figure out how to stop something, then make up something that 
it isn't and claim that it is. That is exactly what has been going on, 
on the other side. They can't figure out a reason why they do not like 
this, but if they can pretend it is TARP-like, then maybe they have a 
chance of defeating it.
  Well, this is not TARP-like. This is a small business lending fund, 
which is a voluntary program for small businesses, and it uses 
community banks as a conduit. So it is literally, if you will, similar 
to 7(a) and 504 programs in the sense that they are designed primarily 
to get capital to small business. Those two programs are direct lending 
programs that help with the partnership of banks, and this is a program 
we are creating--the Small Business Lending Fund--that helps, 
especially given that during this huge economic downturn, two-thirds of 
job losses in America since 2008, because of the implosion, have 
impacted small business the most. So when we look at all the job losses 
from 2008 to 2010, 81 percent of them are from small businesses.
  So we can either design a program that is about helping to get 
capital to small businesses and move our economy forward or we can go 
home for the August recess and say we took partisan votes. I am for 
trying to solve this problem.
  What this is not is a TARP bill. I love the comparison people make, 
because I didn't support the TARP legislation. But just by comparison, 
TARP was an open-ended bailout of Wall Street firms. It basically was 
the U.S. Government buying toxic assets. That is what it was. I call 
it, at times, a blank check, and being able to say no strings attached 
to firms that were failing and then actually get assistance from the 
government. In fact, if you look at it more specifically, TARP was an 
open-ended bailout. It basically said: Here are the resources--targeted 
at Wall Street. It bought toxic assets. The banks weren't viable. They 
basically got the revenue because people were concerned they were 
failing. Today's estimates are--we don't know what tomorrow's estimates 
will be--that it basically cost the taxpayers $100 billion.
  So none of these things are what the Small Business Lending Fund is. 
The Small Business Lending Fund isn't a bailout, it isn't targeted at 
Wall Street, it doesn't buy toxic assets, it is not for banks that are 
not viable, and it doesn't cost the taxpayers any money.
  So the other side is just trying to say this because they do not have 
anything else to say about this program. What they need to be able to 
do is to explain to their constituents why we have lost so many jobs 
with small businesses and we don't have a proposal on the table to help 
grow small businesses.
  But I will tell you what this Small Business Lending Fund is: It is a 
program that is lending to small businesses, it is targeted at Main 
Street, it increases lending instead of buying toxic assets. TARP was 
just about buying toxic assets. This is about saying to banks: Show us 
a plan. If you have a plan on how you are going to increase lending to 
small businesses, then we will give you access to capital. So nothing 
could be further from the way TARP worked. TARP bought toxic assets and 
bailed out banks with no strings attached, and this is a lending 
program. The banks have to be healthy and viable. Nobody asked AIG or 
Citigroup or Goldman Sachs if they were viable. They just wrote a 
check. In fact, here you have to prove you are viable. This actually 
saves taxpayers money; that is, in essence, the Federal Government is 
going to be making

[[Page S6727]]

loans available to small businesses and they will have to pay for that 
access to capital. That payment back to us is expected to generate over 
$1 billion.
  So nothing could be further from the truth in how these two programs 
work. The bottom line is back to that small business job loss and how 
we are going to actually increase job growth for the future. I actually 
think this number is quite significant for our economy and that if we 
want to help small business, we will get them capital.
  One banker from my State sent a message to me and said this:

       We would absolutely use the funds for small business 
     lending. Our bank has a backlog of $50 million to $70 million 
     of loan requests, which is counter to statements of soft loan 
     demand. We have reduced our lending to preserve capital as 
     expected by the regulators.

  They did that because that is what regulators expected. He went on to 
say:

       This legislation would give us the capital to significantly 
     increase lending.

  That is a banker from my State. So that is what they are up against. 
They know this program will help them with the backlog of requests they 
have and the requirements they also have from regulators to keep 
capital and to have reserves. So this is about getting small business 
lending flowing.
  When we think about the fact that this will generate, as some people 
say, an estimated $300 billion of stimulus to our economy, it is 
critical we get this program going. We have experienced six straight 
quarters of decline in overall commercial and industrial lending, and 
the total cumulative decline in the fourth quarter from 2008 until 2010 
of March of this year has been a 20-percent drop--over $315 billion 
taken out of our economy.
  So we can do something in the next couple days, if my colleagues will 
show the dedication of breaking partisan gridlock and also the 
commitment to stay here to get this legislation done. We can start to 
give hope to small businesses.
  My colleague mentioned all the small business organizations that 
support this legislation. I would like to point out, some people say 
this might be about banks or it might be about community organizations. 
It is not. We are working with them because this program is designed to 
use them as a conduit, but we are tonight talking about this because we 
are talking about small businesses. We are talking about the gentleman 
from Mississippi who sent a letter to the chairwoman. We are talking 
about people who do not have a hired lobbyist back here representing 
them to go up and down the halls. They are depending on us.
  We have heard these stories throughout America, of businesses not 
getting access to capital, of people having performing loans cut right 
out from under them, of people who had a bank that was basically 
providing small business capital who cut that access to capital and 
they had to do all sorts of things to keep their businesses going.
  We can continue to have job loss in America or we can start creating 
jobs and do so by investing in small businesses. I hope we will get 
this legislation moving in the next 2 days; that we will be able to 
basically overcome the partisan gridlock. As the Seattle Times said, 
``There is nothing that should be more nonpartisan than putting people 
back to work.'' I could not agree more. So I hope we get this 
legislation passed in the next 2 days.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. I understand the time controlled by the Democrats is 
coming quickly to an end. I ask for 2 more minutes, if that is OK, to 
wrap up.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 5 minutes.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Five minutes. That is great.
  I thank the Senator from Washington, who has been a partner on this 
bill with me from day one. She is a member of the Small Business 
Committee, quite an expert in the field of small business financing 
having built her own small business successfully and helped many others 
to build others. She brings that expertise to the Senate. I appreciate 
her focus and commitment.
  Together with some of our other colleagues we have worked the extra 
hours and time, and we are still hopeful that we can get this bill done 
before we leave for the August break to go home and work in our States 
through that time.
  I want to read just another short paragraph into the record. This is 
going to appear, I understand, in the Wall Street Journal tomorrow. I 
received a copy of it today. It is going to be in response to a 
wrongheaded editorial by the Wall Street Journal. They entitled their 
editorial a couple of days ago, ``Son Of TARP.''
  As Senator Cantwell from Washington said, this doesn't look like 
TARP, it doesn't walk like TARP, it is not TARP. But there are a few 
critics out there who, because they cannot say anything bad about it, 
want to put a bad name on it and scare people away.
  This gentleman, Mr. Richard Neiman, let me say, first, is a 
superintendent of banks for the State of New York. He knows something 
about them, and is a member of the TARP Congressional Oversight Panel. 
So he most certainly understands TARP since he is an overseer of TARP. 
I think he would know if this was TARP, but this is what he writes--
``Small Business Lending Fund Will Help Recovery, Jobs.''

       Your editorial, ``Son of TARP'' [on] July 30 is 
     unfortunately titled, and underestimates the potential of the 
     proposed Small Business Lending Fund.
       Small business growth is the only way out of this 
     recession, yet our entrepreneurs are not being provided the 
     credit they need, as the TARP Congressional Oversight Panel 
     often hears from small business owners. Our recent report on 
     the issue demonstrates that, during the crisis, lending to 
     small business fell by 9 percent at our Nation's largest 
     banks. . . .

  In other words, the Nation's big banks took the TARP money and cut 
lending to small businesses. That is what happened. This bill is to 
reverse that and to give small banks a fighting chance, and small 
businesses, to get a voluntary lending fund to start flowing capital to 
small business. He says:

       Unlike TARP, the SBOF would incentivize banks to lend by 
     lowering the dividend rate at which banks must repay the 
     government if banks meet lending performance metrics. 
     Further, the SBLF removes the TARP stigma that discouraged 
     small banks from participating in government program. . . .
       The SBLF is not a sequel to TARP,

  It is not the son of TARP, it is not the daughter of TARP----

     but it can be a segue toward a stronger future for our 
     Nation's small businesses and their employees.

  I could not have said that better myself. I ask unanimous consent to 
have the letter printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

          Small Business Lending Fund Will Help Recovery, Jobs

       Your editorial, ``Son of TARP'' (July 30) is unfortunately 
     titled, and underestimates the potential of the proposed 
     Small Business Lending Fund (SBLF).
       Small business growth is the only way out of this 
     recession. Yet our entrepreneurs are not being provided the 
     credit they need, as the TARP Congressional Oversight Panel 
     often hears from small business owners. Our recent report on 
     the issue demonstrates that, during the crisis, lending to 
     small businesses fell by 9% at our nation's largest banks, 
     and the bankruptcy of nonbank business lenders such as the 
     CIT Group has further limited credit options.
       The financial crisis and recession have created the lack of 
     demand for credit that your editorial points out, but it is 
     as important to point out the lack of supply. Small banks are 
     reluctant to take on more risk when small businesses' 
     customer base is weak. Breaking this stalemate requires old-
     fashioned underwriting to identify the good deals which are 
     still waiting to be made.
       The SBLF is intended to provide public-sector support to 
     bring credit- and lending-worthy parties back to the table. 
     Unlike TARP, the SBLF would incentivize banks to lend by 
     lowering the dividend rate at which banks must repay the 
     government if the banks meet lending performance metrics. 
     Further, the SBLF removes the TARP stigma that discouraged 
     small banks from participating in government programs that 
     support lending. It is these banks that are the primary 
     source of credit for small businesses which lack the same 
     access to capital markets as large companies.
       The SBLF is not a sequel to TARP, but it can be a segue 
     toward a stronger future for our nation's small businesses 
     and their employees.
                                                Richard H. Neiman,
                                                         New York.