[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 153 (Thursday, October 13, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6474-S6477]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SMALL BUSINESSES
Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I wish to, first of all, kind of tag on
to the remarks of the leader for just a second. One of the things I
wish we would do in this body is get out of the business of demonizing
certain segments of our population. Both sides are guilty of it, from
time to time. But I wish to particularly talk about the major employer
of the United States--small business--and the leader's reference to the
5.6-percent surtax.
Documents show that 392,000 American small businesses would be
impacted by a 5.6-percent surtax in order to pay for the President's
jobs bill. Records show that 72 percent of the American people are
employed by small business.
We have to ask ourselves this question: If we are interested in
creating jobs, why would we target the job creator that creates three-
fourths of the jobs in America and put a surtax on them? It does not
make any sense. If there were sincerity in that offer, those people
would first and foremost be carved out on any punitive surtax and we
probably would have more employment.
I wanted to make that point. I will join anytime, anyplace, anywhere
with the leader to work on creating jobs because that is job one for
the United States of America.
I was a small businessman for 33 years, ran a small business for 22
years.
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I understand the heart and soul of small business. Today I come to the
floor to talk about two small businesses in Georgia and the effect of
regulation on those small businesses and the decisions they have made
this year that impact employment and the economy.
One is a lovely lady named Susan Kolowich. Susan is a dear friend of
my wife's. My wife worked for her for 13 years, has not worked for her
in the last 5 or 6 years. She opened a shop in East Cobb County, in
Marietta, GA, 23 years ago called C'est Moi--``It is I.'' She loves
France. She would go to France every year and buy, and she would bring
back gifts which she sold in her gift shop.
It was a successful small business for 23 years, so successful that
her husband Jim, who had been a Subway sandwich shop owner, decided to
open a restaurant called Cafe de Paris and join it with her C'est Moi
shop so people could come and shop and eat and get a flavor of France.
For 10 years he ran the restaurant and for 23 years she ran the store
successfully. It was difficult in the last 3 or 4 years because of the
economy, but they stayed in business. But finally she threw in the
towel and sold the company. She sold her shop, and Jim, her husband,
sold his restaurant. They sold them because they were up to here with
the oppressive regulation of our government and the continued threat of
things exactly like the surtax on their small business at a time in
which sales are very difficult. That is not an abstract story, that is
the truth. I am sure it is happening in Mississippi, and I am sure it
is happening in Wyoming.
Let me talk about a little bit larger small business, Hennessy Jaguar
and Hennessy Land Rover over in Atlanta, GA. One of the principals in
it is a guy named Steve Hennessy. Steve is a good friend of mine.
On January 3 of this year, I went to the OK Cafe in Atlanta to join a
couple for a meeting about some legislation. It is kind of the watering
hole for breakfast in Atlanta. Everybody who is anybody kind of goes
there. It is a great place to eat. When I walked in the door and walked
past the cash register, where you can see out into the cafe, to see if
my guests I was going to meet with were there, Steve spotted me. I was
not going to meet with him. He jumped up and said: Johnny, I need to
talk to you now. He ran across the restaurant. I thought he was going
to give me a bear hug, he looked so excited. He got up close, and he
put his index finger right on my chin. He said: I just fired a salesman
and hired two compliance officers to comply with the credit
requirements of Dodd-Frank.
So regulation did create two jobs. It created two compliance
officers, but it cost a salesman. Well, if you are punishing the
salesman and rewarding the compliance officer, the economy is going to
go straight down because you are punishing productivity, you are
punishing job creation for the sake of regulatory compliance.
Now, some regulation is good. I believe our job as legislators is to
see to it that we mitigate risks for the American people. But this
administration appears to think its job is to eliminate risk. Well, if
you eliminate risk, you stay in bed--when you wake up in the morning,
you stay there until night, you do not do anything because you do not
take a risk. Capitalism is about risk. Risk and reward are about our
economy.
So when people talk about regulatory oppression, those are two
stories in Atlanta, GA, where regulation has actually caused two
businesses to be sold and jobs to be lost and another business to hire
two people to comply with government regulation and fire someone who
was in sales. It is backward at best, and it is wrong.
So I say to the leader, who did make an acknowledgement that he
wanted to mitigate regulation, let's sit down and let's find out what
we need to do. Let's call a timeout. Let's do what Senator Collins from
Maine said. Let's take a timeout for a year. Let's try to digest and
absorb the regulations we have passed without continuing to put more
threatening regulations on top of businesses at a time when we have 9.1
percent unemployment in America, and in my State we have 10.2. It is
time for us to be proactive on taking the shackles off American small
businesses, not threaten them with surtaxes and not oppress them with
regulation. Instead, let's work to empower small businesses to help us
come out of this recession.
I think my dear friend Senator Barrasso, the physician from the great
State of Wyoming, wants to address precisely the same subject I am.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Wyoming is
recognized.
Mr. BARRASSO. I am delighted to be joining my colleagues, Senator
Isakson from Georgia, and Senator Wicker is here also from Mississippi.
We think this is very important.
The leader started talking about today and said we need to focus on
jobs. That is what we wanted to focus on for all of the time of the
Obama administration. But, no, the President ignored jobs--ignored jobs
his first year in office, ignored jobs his second year in office. Here
we are more than halfway through his third year in office, and finally
the President has noticed what has been on the minds of the American
people.
This is a President and a majority leader who forced through this
body a health care law that is bad for patients; bad for providers, the
nurses and doctors who take care of those patients; and bad for
taxpayers, ignoring what the American people said they wanted to focus
on, which was jobs, the economy, the debt, the spending. We see a
majority leader who led this body to adding more to the debt--now $14
trillion in debt--more debt, more spending, more money that is owed to
China.
We need to put Americans to work. We need to get Americans back to
work. The majority leader talked about 14 million Americans looking for
jobs. There are over 4 million who have not worked for over a year. In
that kind of a situation, it is going to be a lot harder for those
folks to ever get a job again--ever get a job again.
And the regulations just keep on coming. A month ago, the President
came to the Hill, visited, and had a joint session of Congress. He
said: I want to get rid of some of these regulations. He said: I can
identify regulations--he came out with a list of about $4 billion worth
of regulations--to lower the cost of business over the next 5 years.
But in the month of September alone, this administration came out with
230 proposed rules and 338 final rules. And if you go to what this
administration says that those rules are going to cost the people of
this country, cost the job creators of this country, even the
administration, using their own numbers, that cost is going to be $10
billion.
I heard our colleague from Georgia talk about the paperwork, the
compliance officers. Just yesterday, this administration came out,
under Dodd-Frank, with new rules and regulations--proposed rules. They
took only 11 pages of this massive bill, but only 11 pages, and when
you look at the 298 pages of proposed rules that have come out, what do
the government regulators, the Obama administration regulators, say it
is going to cost the businesses of this country in terms of manhours
having to be spent to comply with the paperwork? These aren't my
numbers, these aren't Senators Isakson's numbers, these aren't Senator
Wicker's numbers. Mr. President, 6,283,000 hours of paperwork. That is
what the government experts say is going to have to be spent on
paperwork to comply with one component of the Dodd-Frank law. How is
that going to help? How is that kind of a drag on a society going to
help create jobs?
You know, the President says: If the Republicans have ideas, we want
to hear them. The majority leader stood here and said: If the
Republicans have ideas, we want to hear them. Well, a month ago, a
month ago to this day, when the President came to the Hill, earlier
that morning a number of colleagues, House and Senate Members, came to
talk about a Western Caucus Jobs Frontier bill, a number of bills
Republicans have proposed breaking down Washington's barriers to
America's red, white, and blue jobs.
The majority leader said we ought to spend more money. The President
said we ought to spend more money. The President talked about his so-
called stimulus plan, and he said it was going to save or create 3.5
million jobs. We have lost millions of jobs since this President came
into office.
The President talked about green jobs. He said his clean-energy
policies
[[Page S6476]]
would create 5 million new jobs. We have just seen the Solyndra
situation--1,100 people fired because of bad bets by this
administration. This is an administration that should not be betting
with the taxpayers' money. It is not the administration's money. It is
not the President's money. That is why the American people are so up in
arms. They see what all of this spending is doing, and it is not
helping jobs.
I see my colleague from Mississippi is here. We can go back and forth
and talk about this. I know he has examples and situations in
Mississippi. I see them in Wyoming all of the time, people having to
deal with the redtape coming out of Washington. The President talks a
pretty good game, but when you look at what is happening out there, the
American people are very disappointed. The American people deserve
better than what they are getting from this administration.
So I would ask my colleague from Mississippi whether there are things
he sees happening to his friends and neighbors at home that we need to
share with the rest of the country?
Mr. WICKER. Well, there is no question about it. I appreciate my two
friends coming down and helping with this colloquy today.
There are two companies I want to talk about in a moment, but let me
say at the outset that we all want to create jobs for Americans, there
is no question about it. The President came into office wanting to
create jobs. The problem is, he has not let history be a guide.
If we go ahead with this second stimulus bill, we will be following
the same failed programs that not only have not created jobs for
Americans, but, as a matter of fact, the policies have made things
worse for Americans and for job creation. The President's proposal and
the proposal the majority leader just embraced is a ``spend now, pay
later'' approach. It is one that has been proven not to work. Three
years after we tried this at the beginning of the President's term, we
have not put more Americans back to work.
This should be a glaring reminder of the failures of the first
stimulus package and the probability and likelihood that this second
stimulus package would be met with the same result. What we have seen
since the first stimulus is that the Federal debt has skyrocketed,
there are nearly 2 million fewer jobs, and the economic growth is
limping along at a meager 1 percent. So many other countries have a
higher GDP growth than that. It is tragic that our country has not kept
up. The unemployment rate has hovered at 9 percent for 30 months in a
row. If you add in those who have given up looking for work or settled
for part-time work, that number skyrockets from around 9 percent
unemployment, which is an unspeakable number, to some 16 percent. In
fact, some 6 million people have been without a job for more than 6
months.
We know the President's policies are not working. We have seen very
slow movement and, frankly, in many instances, that movement has been
backward. The big-government approach of spend now and pay later has
simply been a wet blanket for America's job creators.
The fact is there are some things on which we can agree. In this time
of divided government, we must approach the idea of job creation in a
bipartisan manner. The House of Representatives is controlled by
Republicans. This body is controlled by Democrats. The executive
branch, including the regulatory regime in this country, is strictly
controlled by the Democratic Party. So we need to work together in a
step-by-step approach.
A comprehensive package of ``pass this bill, pass this bill
immediately without amendments'' has been rejected by both Democrats
and Republicans in this city, and we now need to embark on a step-by-
step approach, and we can be quick about it. One example was yesterday.
When we finally got around to it, the House of Representatives passed
the trade bills, once the President sent them to us. That was done
yesterday afternoon. By 7 or 8 last evening, the Senate passed all of
these trade agreements on a huge bipartisan basis. So this is a step in
the right direction. There are other things we can do. But I wish to
commend the President for finally sending the trade bills to the
Congress and for getting that done and opening the new markets. So that
is a step.
The Senator from Georgia mentioned some companies and some potential
job creators in his State. My friend from Wyoming asked me to talk
about examples in Mississippi.
Actually, my wife Gail and I had an opportunity to participate in a
christening of some boats in Gulfport, MS, just the day before
yesterday. This was at the construction area of Trinity Yachts. I know
what the initial reaction is: Why should we be concerned with yachts? I
tell you why we should be concerned with yachts. Because we employ
thousands upon thousands of Americans building those yachts.
I will never own a yacht. I don't aspire to even travel on a yacht.
But I am glad there are a bunch of people around the world who want to
buy them, because we employ a thousand people at Trinity Yachts, and we
want to increase that.
As a matter of fact, what we helped christen the day before yesterday
was not a yacht at all, it was two tugboats. Trinity Yacht makes
tugboats, and they will be helping bring liquefied natural gas into the
port of Pascagoula. So this shipyard built the tugs, Signet Maritime
bought the tugs, and they will be creating jobs in Gulfport, and will
be creating jobs at the Port of Pascagoula, and they want to create a
lot more jobs.
I was told by the management and ownership of Trinity Yachts that
business is a little soft in the shipyard. But if the President would
simply go back to what we used to have in terms of oil and gas
permitting, if we would lift this de facto ban on oil wells in the Gulf
of Mexico and get back to the business we had year before last, then
business could be great guns at Trinity Yachts.
We are not talking about yachts being constructed by Trinity, we are
talking about oil and gas drilling platforms. The quicker permits and
drilling projects in the Gulf of Mexico could bring about more than
200,000 new jobs in the next year. That is a job creator proposal that
is simple. All we need to do is enforce the law that is currently on
the books and get back to permitting so we can get back to producing
our own energy.
The oil and natural gas sector is responsible for 9 million jobs,
according to the Congressional Research Service, and we have in America
the largest recoverable stores of natural gas, oil, and coal on Earth.
So if you want to know another Republican proposal--which is a
bipartisan proposal when you get down to it, because our gulf coast
delegation consists of Republicans and Democrats--then here is a
concrete proposal: Let's get back to producing our own energy resources
in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere in the United States. Nine million
jobs, and it could be more.
Mr. ISAKSON. The Senator from Mississippi jogged my memory, and I
want to jog his. He was in the House of Representatives in 1994, if I
am not mistaken. I got here in 1999. But I remember the first year of
the Clinton administration, when they put a luxury tax on yachts, yacht
construction went out of business and thousands of jobs were lost. I
don't know if Trinity is a sub S, an LLC, or a sole proprietorship, but
it is probably one of those three types of corporations, and I am sure
it is a small business. They are going to have a 5.6-percent surtax on
their income because of what is in the proposal of the President, which
is, allegedly, to pay for a jobs bill. So this is deja vu all over
again. The administration is imposing more taxes to pay for government
jobs that take money out of the pockets of small business that creates
the jobs in America.
Trinity Yachts--and I will do some research to find out if that is
true, because I don't know the company--I will bet is one of the ones
that pays their taxes as if they were an individual, and they would be
affected by the tax the President is proposing, just like the yacht
industry that was put out of business in 1993 because of the Clinton
tax. So the Republicans took over in 1994 and reformed the Tax Code and
cut Federal spending.
Mr. WICKER. The point is, they are a bunch of average, hard-working
Mississippians, average, hard-working Americans, who are glad to come
to work each day, working hard to build these boats, and we ought to
encourage them.
[[Page S6477]]
I don't know the corporate structure of that particular job creator,
but I know the larger point is that many of the job creators do pay
taxes at the individual level. We know from research that four out of
five of the taxpayers who would pay the higher taxes being proposed by
the President are business owners--the very people we are hoping will
create jobs, and create them soon for Americans.
Mr. ISAKSON. I thank the Senator from Mississippi for his stories,
which are true and to the point. My story was about two small
businesses. And I thank the Senator physician from the great State of
Wyoming, and I would ask if he has any additional remarks.
Mr. BARRASSO. Well, I know you see this in Georgia and in
Mississippi. We know what doesn't work. We know what doesn't work is
more borrowing and more spending and overregulation and the threat of
raising taxes on people and the job creators of this country. So there
is much to be done, and that is why we actually came out with this Jobs
Frontier--the western caucus did--because we want to increase
affordable American energy.
The President, when he was running for office, said under his
proposals electricity costs would necessarily skyrocket. If you want a
productive, vibrant economy, you need low-cost energy, and if you want
a secure nation, you need American energy to do that. So when my
colleague from the Gulf State of Mississippi talks about energy in the
gulf, there is a lot there. I can talk about Wyoming from the
standpoint of energy being available on Federal land, which is being
blocked by regulations. We ought to be exploring for that energy as
well as in Alaska. So there is much we can do to make our country
stronger, safer, more secure, better, and more vibrant, but the
proposal put forth by the President--and here I agree with my colleague
from Mississippi--is another spending bill--just spending--as the first
stimulus was. It is a bill that is not going to do what we need to do
to get this economy going in a vibrant sense. From my perspective, the
No. 1 thing we should do is stop doing what we know doesn't work.
Mr. ISAKSON. Well, I want to conclude, unless the Senator from
Mississippi has anything to add.
Mr. WICKER. Well, just to say this, and I will take a minute to say
it and then I will thank my friend from Georgia for taking the lead on
this colloquy.
We also need to show job creators that we are actually serious about
fixing our fiscal house. You know, we have had the Gang of 6, we have
had the Simpson-Bowles Commission, we have had Dr. Coburn and Senator
Lieberman with a proposal, and we have had Alice Rivlin's proposal--an
expert on budgetary matters. We know the solutions that are out there,
and they are hard to do politically. They would subject us all to
intense political criticism and a firestorm. But if we do it on a
bipartisan basis for the good of this country now, for the good of not
only job creators today and people out there who are dying to come back
to work but also for future generations, then we can do the right
thing.
I will simply say this: I call on the President of the United States
to give us some leadership on working together on a bipartisan basis to
make these tough decisions. If we do it together, as Ronald Reagan and
Tip O'Neill did in the 1980s, we can make the case to the American
people that sometimes you have to do hard things, but we do things on a
bipartisan basis to create jobs and to make a better future for future
generations. It will not be done unless the Chief Executive of the
United States of America comes forward and signals a willingness to
hold hands with us and do the right thing for the future.
I desperately hope in these final months of 2011 we can get that
signal sent to the committee of 12, and that we can work together to
make major, significant structural changes that will save our fiscal
future.
I thank my colleague.
Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Mississippi, and
I will close by simply saying you have heard three Republicans this
morning talking about differences we might have on regulation and on
tax policy, but you have also heard the distinguished Senator from
Mississippi, the physician Senator from Wyoming, and myself, from the
State of Georgia, say we are ready, we are willing, and we are hopeful
that we can sit down together as a Congress--not as a partisan Congress
but as a bipartisan Congress--and find solutions to the regulatory
problems, find incentives for businesses to invest, and find ways we
can create jobs in the private sector, because in the end that is where
job creation takes place.
I will end with where Senator Reid started in his remarks. Yesterday
was a landmark day. Republicans and Democrats came together and passed
three free-trade agreements which will create jobs in the United States
of America. Our problem is we waited almost a thousand days to do it.
Let's start accelerating those decisions that must be made to bring us
together. Let's find ways to cut our spending, empower our businesses,
and find ways to regulate in a positive way, not in a suppressive and
oppressive way on American small businesses.
Senator Wicker, Senator Isakson, and Senator Barrasso are three who
stand ready to join in doing that, anytime, anyplace, anywhere.
I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. 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. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in
morning business for 15 minutes.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
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