[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 43 (Thursday, March 15, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1688-S1693]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
STARTUP COMPANIES
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I rise to speak on some of the issues that
were just addressed by the Republican leader; that is, the legislation
we will hopefully turn to next about creating jobs.
There are a lot of occasions when legislation comes to the floor of
this Senate where I, similar to many Members, have a view on it, and we
kind of weigh in on our positions. But this legislation, as it comes
forward, is something for which I have more than just an intellectual
or political or philosophical viewpoint. This legislation actually
involves the business I was in for nearly 20 years.
I was proud of the fact that starting in the early 1980s--up until
the time I was elected Governor of Virginia--I was involved, originally
as an angel investor and then as a venture capitalist, in helping start
companies across this country. I am proud to have been involved as a
venture capitalist in funding almost 70 companies--those companies that
grew to now employ tens of thousands of Americans.
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As the Acting President pro tempore and some of the folks realize, a
lot of those companies I was involved with were involved in
telecommunications. I was the cofounder of Nextel, although I cannot
seem to turn my cell phone off at the appropriate times. But I think
that background gave me some sense of what it means to find a
management team to find the capital and get a company started, to allow
it to grow, create jobs, create economic prosperity.
This issue around capital formation, encouraging startups,
encouraging entrepreneurs, is an issue on which we ought to be able to
come together.
I see my good friend, the Senator from Kansas, who I know is going to
speak in a few moments after I am finished. He and I have worked
together on legislation called the Startup Act that has been endorsed
by tech councils across the country, has been endorsed by and builds
upon the work of the Kauffman Foundation, has been endorsed by and
builds upon the work of the President's Council on Jobs and
Competitiveness.
This ought to be an area where we can find common ground. Some of the
ideas we are going to be discussing in this legislation are not only
ideas Senator Moran and I have worked on but I know Senator Coons and
Senator Rubio and Senator Toomey and Senator Schumer have worked on,
also Senator Tester, Senator Merkley, and Senator Brown. There is a
list, actually, in terms of the sponsors or cosponsors on a number of
these bills--a number not in the single digits but literally in the
dozens, probably in excess of 20 and, for the most part, almost every
one of these pieces of legislation is bipartisan.
Why do we need to do this? Because if we look where the jobs have
been created in America over the last 20 years, for the most part we
find, unfortunately, the job growth from companies that are in the
Fortune 1000 has been flat, if not slightly negative.
So while we applaud and support America's largest businesses because
of increased productivity, because of globalization, those are not the
companies adding jobs.
While every Member of the Senate, when they stand, stands and
applauds small business--and I know my colleagues on the floor support
small business, the traditional small businesses--the butcher shop, the
retailer, the hardware store--there has not been much job growth
amongst those companies as well.
So where have the jobs come from? The jobs have come from startup
businesses, the kinds of businesses where an entrepreneur tries to
scrape up a little bit of capital and takes an idea to market. Nearly
80 percent, according to the Kauffman Foundation, of all the new jobs
created in America in the last 20 years have come from these firms.
We oftentimes think of these firms as technology firms. Many of them
are--the Facebooks and Googles. But there are also the companies that
span the reach of all kinds of different areas--the Lululemons, in
terms of clothing stores, or Under Armour, a company that is in
Maryland. These are the kinds of companies we need to do more to
support in their growth, particularly right now when our economy is
still struggling.
So what are we trying to do in this legislation? To my mind, there
are three or four areas these bills need to address.
First of all, we need to make it easier for these startup companies
to raise capital. Over the last decade, a lot of the traditional
sources of capital raising have actually diminished, particularly since
the financial crisis. The number of venture capital firms that exist,
that fund companies, has actually decreased.
The ability for a company to go public--for which, perhaps, we got a
little too excessive in the late 1990s, when we saw dot.com companies
rush to go public and then that dot.com bubble burst and those
companies failed--but that access to the public markets has been
seriously constrained, partially because of added regulations,
partially because of added reporting requirements, and partially
because there has been a recognition that going public may not have
been the right route for all these companies.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator's time has expired.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an additional
5 minutes.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. WARNER. The result is, many of these startup companies end up
having to sell to a larger company, and many of the ideas and many of
the job-creation opportunities are then constrained.
We need to make it easier for these companies to access capital. Some
of the ideas that are going to be proposed in the legislation will do
that. Some of the reforms to reg A, reg D--trying to look at raising
the number of investors a startup company can have before they have to
report--all are sensible, appropriate incentives to help these startup
companies get going.
I understand the very important requirements put in place by the so-
called Sarbanes-Oxley legislation a few years back, but the cost of
going public for startup companies now, on average, is $3 million to $4
million. Those costs are not costs that many of these startup companies
can absorb. So some of the sensible reforms that have been proposed by
Senator Toomey and Senator Schumer that I have been a proud cosponsor
on, on a so-called on-ramp for startup companies, I think make sense as
well.
There are also other tools we can use to help startup companies as
they try to access capital.
We have seen a dramatic transformation of the Internet over the last
20 years. Every business, every part of our life has been changed.
There is now the ability to use the Internet as a way for small
investors to get the same kind of deals that up to this point only
select investors have gotten that have been customers of some of the
best known investment banking firms, where we can now use the power of
the Internet, through a term called crowdfunding. There has to be
appropriate investor restraints under this and investor protections,
but crowdfunding using the Internet is another source of capital.
I hope that will be included in the legislation we are looking at,
and I wish to commend Senator Bennet and Senator Merkley and Senator
Brown for working hard on that.
But there are other pieces of this legislation we have to take on if
we are going to compete and win in this global competition for talent
and ideas and have these jobs created in America. That is why I was so
proud to work with Senator Moran in our startup legislation that says
attracting capital is one part of making a company successful. Another
part of making a company successful is winning the worldwide
competition for talent. Unfortunately, time and again what we are doing
in this country is losing that competition for the best talent. There
are literally tens of thousands of jobs that are going unfilled right
now because we do not have enough American-born scientists, engineers,
and mathematicians with graduate degrees.
Because we have the world's best system of higher education, we train
many of the world's best and brightest. But with our current
immigration policies, we train those folks at the Virginia Techs, the
University of New Mexicos, get them that Ph.D. in engineering, and then
we send them home when they have an opportunity to get a job in this
country. We cannot talk to a tech company anywhere in America that says
we are losing the competition for talent.
So what does our legislation do? We actually do what tech firms have
called for for years, which is, in effect, to staple that green card to
those individuals who get not a bachelor's degree but a master's or
Ph.D. in the science, technology, engineering or math field, the so-
called STEM fields, if they have a job opportunity in America.
We allow that intellectual capital and talent to actually reside and
help create jobs. What we do as well is create a new category--in
effect, an entrepreneur's visa. We have a very narrow category within
our immigration policies right now that allows certain immigrants who
want to come, invest in other companies in this country, and hire
Americans, to get access to a visa. We would expand that category.
So if an individual can demonstrate that they have raised capital and
are willing to hire a number of Americans, why do we not allow them to
start that job in America rather than going somewhere else to do it? So
I believe we put
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in place small changes to our immigration policies that will, again,
allow us to compete.
Our startup legislation looks at how we can encourage our
universities because we need capital, we need talent, but we also need
the intellectual capital, and that comes from ideas. Our universities
across this country do a good job of doing basic research. Our
universities do not do as good a job as they could and should in moving
those ideas from the laboratory into the marketplace.
I know my time is about to expire so I will wrap up. What we do in
our legislation as well is we do not add additional funding, but we
take a small sliver, fifteenth-tenths of 1 percent of our existing
research and development dollars, and actually use that as incentive
funds to get ideas out of the laboratory into commercialization.
So I know we are going to move to this legislation shortly. I do
believe there were a number of Members, particularly newer Members, who
have been working on this legislation across the aisle. That was an
attempt to put together a broad bipartisan bill. I am not sure that is
going to come to pass on the Senate floor, unfortunately, because on
this issue I do agree with the Republican leader. This should not be
Republican or Democratic legislation. This should be a bipartisan piece
of legislation that would actually encourage startups to get the
capital, to get the talent, to get the ideas, so we can actually make
sure we move forward on job creation.
The data is clear. The jobs over the last 20 years have come from
these kinds of startup companies, the kind I was proud to help fund in
my 20 years of identifying funding and working on these startup
ventures. We need to do all we can to support them. We need to move
this legislation as quickly as possible. My hope is that we can move
beyond the rather narrowly drawn capital formation legislation that we
are going to look at and look at these other areas around crowdfunding,
around appropriate visa policies, around commercialization of
intellectual capital to move these forward.
I am going to yield the floor for my friend and colleague, someone
who has been a leader on this issue as well, someone whom I know has
been criss-crossing the country--over the last couple of days,
recently, he came back from Austin, TX, where he was celebrated as a
startup guru--and that is my friend, the Senator from Kansas. Let me
also acknowledge the Senator from South Dakota who has been a leader,
particularly on the regulation D reform.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from South Dakota is
recognized.
Mr. THUNE. I ask unanimous consent to enter into a colloquy with my
colleague from Kansas, Senator Moran.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I do appreciate the opportunity to join
with my colleague, Senator Moran from Kansas, to speak in support of
the bill that is before us, H.R. 3606, the Jumpstart Our Business
Startups, or JOBS Act. The JOBS Act is a bipartisan bill that passed
the House of Representatives by a vote of 390 to 23. It has also been
endorsed by the White House.
Small businesses are the engines of our economy, but government
redtape is currently preventing these businesses from creating even
more jobs. This commonsense bill would enable small businesses in South
Dakota and across the country to better access much needed capital so
they can make investments and add employees.
There is no reason it should not receive similar support in the
Senate. Creating jobs should be one of our top priorities in the
Senate. We owe it to the American people and to small businesses across
this country that are counting on us to do something that will make it
easier, less expensive, and less difficult to create jobs.
Too often what we see coming out of Washington, DC, are policies that
put up obstacles and barriers and impediments to our small businesses,
making it more difficult and more costly to create jobs. We see that
daily with regulations coming out of many of the agencies in
Washington, DC. The Senator from Kansas and I have been on the floor
previously talking about regulations proposed by the Department of
Labor--85 pages worth of regulations--that would, in a very
prescriptive way, tell farmers and ranchers how young people can work
in their farming and ranching operations.
It is amazing to me the level of detail to which those regulations go
and how prescriptive they are with regard to something that has
historically in this country and traditionally been very much a part of
our heritage; that is, the young people growing up on farms, being
involved in those farming and ranching operations, making them
profitable. We have a Federal agency now that thinks it knows better.
So these 85 pages of regulations came out and suggested that there are
certain things young people on farms and ranches should not do--not
only suggested them, it says they cannot do. They cannot herd cattle
from the back of a horse, cannot work around grain bins and stockyards,
cannot work with animals that are more than 6 months old, cannot work
at elevations or heights more than 6 feet.
These are all things the Department of Labor, in its infinite wisdom,
has determined they know better about farming and ranching operations
in this country than do the people who work there. It would transform
the way in which family farm and ranch operations are conducted. It
adds additional cost and barriers to these farmers and ranchers who
work so hard to make a living. They are the quintessential small
businesses in our country. They work hard. They have a tremendous work
ethic. They are people who make their living on the land, and all they
simply ask from their government is that they not impose these types of
barriers and regulations and impediments to them doing what they do
best; that is, to feed the world and to create a strong and vibrant
farm economy.
So the JOBS bill that is before us takes us in a different direction
than all of the regulations I just referred to, which makes it more
difficult and more expensive for people in this country to create jobs
and to grow their businesses. This package of bills that came over from
the House of Representative, which, as I mentioned, passed by a vote of
390 to 23--there were only 23 dissenting votes in the House, an
overwhelming bipartisan majority in support of this legislation. And it
is because these are such commonsensical things--so commonsensical that
the White House has endorsed most of these bills, if not all of these
bills.
They passed in the House of Representatives individually before they
were packaged into this particular piece of legislation that was sent
to us by that 390-to-23 vote. They were passed individually by huge
votes. There is a piece of legislation, a bill that was passed in the
House of Representatives, that Senator Toomey has the companion bill in
the Senate that passed 421 to 1.
We had one of those bills that passed in the House of Representatives
by a voice vote and the legislation--the bill I have as a part of this
package passed in the House of Representatives by a vote of 413 to 11
last November. That was also included in this JOBS bill that has come
over to us now from the House.
So what we want to do is make it easier for small businesses, which
literally are the engine and the backbone of our economy, to create
most of the new jobs in our economy; to do that, to create jobs, to
invest capital, to put their capital to work, and to make our economy
grow. So I would just say, by way of introduction, that I hope we
cannot only get to this bill, get on this bill, but move quickly to
pass it through the Senate, and get it on the President's desk because
we do not have a lot of time to waste.
We all know what the statistics are. We know the high unemployment
rate we have seen, the sluggish economic growth. We need to get this
economy growing again. We need to make it easier, not harder, for small
businesses to create jobs and to get access to capital. Many of these
bills in this package--this small business jobs package--really do
focus on the issue of capital
[[Page S1691]]
formation and allowing small businesses to have easier access to the
capital that will allow them to grow their companies and to grow jobs.
So what I would like to do--my colleague from Kansas is here. As I
said, he is someone who, as a member of the Senate Banking Committee,
has been a leader on this legislation and on many of these issues, and
a leader, as I mentioned earlier, in fighting regulations coming out of
Washington, DC, that make it harder and more difficult and more
expensive to create jobs, in particular, as I mentioned earlier--we had
this discussion a couple of weeks ago with regard to these Department
of Labor regulations impacting family farms and ranchers--just one of
many regulations, the proliferation of regulations coming out of
Washington, DC, that consistently are overreaching in terms of their
impact and what they do to create additional burdens for our small
businesses.
So I would like to yield to my colleague from Kansas for his
observations and thoughts with regard to the JOBS bill that is before
us, and what we as a Senate ought to be doing to try to create better
conditions and a more favorable environment for our small businesses to
create jobs.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Kansas.
Mr. MORAN. I thank the Senator from South Dakota. I am pleased that
we are here finally on a topic of significant importance to the
country. We have heard for a long time about the necessity of creating
jobs, of creating an opportunity for Americans to succeed. In fact, I
would guess that is the primary motivation for why many of us serve in
the Senate: so that every generation, those who follow us, but those
even today have the opportunity to pursue the American dream.
I think our goal is not to create a circumstance in which no one
fails, but the goal is to create a circumstance in which many succeed.
So while it has been very disappointing that the Senate has failed for
so long to get to the important topic that we should be addressing, job
creation, we are finally here today.
I commend the leaders of both parties for reaching an agreement that
allows us to begin the discussion and ultimately, hopefully, pass the
JOBS bill in a form just like the House passed a few days ago.
I came to this issue of job creation and innovation and
entrepreneurship with a realization that this Congress is failing--this
administration is failing to address the issue of the deficit and the
financial condition of our country. I believe my kids and those
Americans who follow us are going to be in much worse shape because the
administration and Congress have failed to address the issue we face
today, which is our country is broke. We are spending money we do not
have.
We cannot seem to resolve that issue in a way that puts us on a path
toward a balanced budget. I will not ever walk away from my belief that
is necessary. I will continue to work as a member of the Senate
Appropriations Committee and in every capacity I have to see that we
get our spending under control and that we are on that path toward
balancing the budget. Because of the failure of the administration and
the leadership of the Senate to address this issue of the deficit, I
started looking for ways in which we could approach the deficit in
perhaps a way that is easier for us to grasp, easier for us to deal
with.
And that is job creation, because the more people who are working the
more taxes that are collected and the more money comes into the coffers
of the U.S. Treasury to pay down this tremendous debt. These two issues
are actually related. I have tried to figure out how to explain to
Kansans why the deficit matters in whether they have a job or can
pursue a better job. The answer is that no business is going to expand,
grow, or invest in capital and plant and equipment and hire new people
if they are concerned that the United States might be the next Greece--
the next country in which our creditors decide that we are no longer
capable of paying back this tremendous debt that has accrued over a
long period of time now and escalated in the last few years.
The goal of paying down the debt is certainly worthy in and of
itself. But if we can do that, we also have the opportunity to create
an environment in which business feels comfortable in hiring more
employees and adding plant and equipment and investing in their
business and growing it.
Today we come to the floor in support of the JOBS bill, as passed by
the House of Representatives, in hopes that the Senate will do so in
short order. It is the opportunity we have to make a tremendous
difference so that Americans can, today and in the future, pursue that
American dream.
We, over a long period of time, have created many impediments toward
the success of that job creation. The Senator from South Dakota talked
about the regulatory environment, and we have highlighted on the Senate
floor a major overreach that fundamentally alters the way we live our
lives back home in Kansas in regard to family farms. Farming and
ranching in our State is a family operation. Yet the Department of
Labor believes it is their role to tell parents what that relationship
should be with their own children and their ability to work on their
own family farm. It is just an example of this mindset in our Nation's
capital that exists today that says we know better than the American
people, better than the moms and dads, about the families, about what
is the role for a young person working on a family farming operation in
Kansas and across the country. That is an example.
Those regulations are there today and they are being proposed all the
time. In my view, if the Federal Government believes it has this
significant role to play in defining the relationship between moms and
dads and working on a farm, what can't the Federal Government tell us
back home what we can and cannot do? If they can go so far as to--I
guess I should say, who more than a parent cares more about the safety
of their own children, whom they are working side by side with or
working with a neighboring farm? This is but one example in which we
have decided that the government knows best, the Department of Labor
knows better than moms and dads.
Once we reach that kind of conclusion, then there is nothing off
limits for the Federal Government to say we know better than the
citizens of our country. That is a misguided approach to the Federal
Government, the role that we are to play. But it is a handicap and
hindrance toward the ability of the American people, the entrepreneurs,
and those who believe in the free enterprise system--it is an
impediment to them ever pursuing that opportunity to create jobs and an
economy that encourages job creation.
I appreciate earlier Senator Warner, the Senator from Virginia, being
on the floor talking about legislation he and I are working on called
the Startups Act. We continue to believe there is a great opportunity
for entrepreneurs. In fact, research from the Kaufman Foundation shows
that startups less than 5 years old have accounted for nearly all of
the net jobs created in the United States from 1980 to 2005. In fact,
startups create 3 million new jobs every year.
What we are about today is a portion of this legislation that Senator
Warner and I have introduced, the Startups Act, about the capital
formation provisions of the bill. We have been working with Senators
Coons and Rubio and others to blend these provisions into the Startups
Act, but a portion is now on the Senate floor. I am here to commend the
opportunity that we have today to pursue that portion of job creation.
It is not enough, but it is certainly a great beginning point for us in
the Senate to follow the lead of the House of Representatives and
create an opportunity for capital formation.
This legislation creates tax incentives that will spur investments in
startups, reduce the regulatory burden and barriers that make it harder
for startups to grow, and win the battle for us to see that the United
States remains a highly competitive, innovative, entrepreneurial
environment in which businesses succeed. I suppose what we say about
businesses succeeding--it is not about necessarily the business success
but about the consequences of that success, which is that Americans
will have jobs, the opportunity to put food on the families' tables,
save for their kids' education, save for their retirement, and meet the
responsibilities we have as parents and members of the family.
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I join the Senator from South Dakota in my strong support for moving
forward and passing this JOBS legislation. I also ask the Senate to
consider further legislative initiatives, such as the one Senator
Warner and I have, to make sure we do more to create that circumstance,
that opportunity in America, where everybody has that opportunity to
succeed, and that many will.
Mr. THUNE. Will the Senator yield for a question on jobs and the
economy?
Mr. MORAN. Yes.
Mr. THUNE. I appreciate the Senator's legislation. I hope it is acted
on. It is a rare day indeed when you have legislation that has
bipartisan support, and in the case of the JOBS bills, also supported
by the White House. That is a tremendous rarity here and one we ought
to take advantage of. We should move the JOBS package quickly. I hope
the Senator's bill will enjoy similar bipartisan support and will be
something we can act on as well.
These are the types of things that right now I think the American
people--certainly the people of South Dakota and the people of Kansas--
want to see us focus on. They want us to do things that will make it
easier, less expensive, and less difficult to create jobs in the
country and put people back to work and grow this economy and provide
more opportunities for Americans.
The question I have for the Senator from Kansas, because it bears
directly on the issue of the economy and has to do with regulations and
policies coming out of Washington, is this: We are talking about a
package of legislation that would enable access for job creators and
small businesses to the capital they need to invest and grow their
business and create jobs. It is enabling, in a sense, allowing better
conditions for capital formation, especially for small businesses,
which is where most of the jobs are created. There are other things the
Federal Government is not doing that it should be doing to help the
economy grow and drive down input costs for people in the country.
I want to refer to the issue of fuel prices. In a State such as mine,
where you have an agricultural economy, it is very dependent upon
energy, in terms of diesel fuel, fertilizer, and all those things that
are incredibly dependent upon energy. It is also a rural State with a
pretty big geography, where people have to drive long distances. When
you see gas approach the $4 range--and in my State, it is not there
yet, but in other States it is--that is a very serious impediment.
There are things we ought to be doing to open more domestic
production, to allow people who want to invest in energy to do so. We
have lots of laws and regulations that make it more difficult, that
prohibit it. We have what I would call some low-hanging fruit or easy
opportunities to do that. The Keystone Pipeline is one that would bring
about 800,000 barrels a day into this country, where it would be
processed and refined and put Americans to work and lessen the
dependence we have on foreign oil.
I am curious how that impacts a State such as Kansas and how it
impacts job creation and small businesses, when we talk about Federal
policies that have a direct bearing on our economy and people's
everyday lives, and particularly with regard to small businesses, which
we are talking about today.
Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, I have no doubt that the ability to have an
economic recovery and create jobs is, in so many ways, determined by
what happens with our actions in regard to an energy policy and the
development of our own resources.
Certainly, while we are here to talk about jobs today, there is a
national security, military stance issue that is, unfortunately,
related to our strong dependence upon foreign energy supplies. This
Congress, this administration, in my view, needs to get out of the way
and let the private sector begin the process of meeting our country's
energy needs.
When we talk about high prices and complain about the price at the
pump, what we are complaining about is that the supply is insufficient
to meet the demand. The supply is not increased and the demand goes up,
and the resulting consequence is increasing prices. You can remedy that
by increasing the supply of energy in this country. We have a vast
array of those resources that, because of the regulations, environment,
and the policies of the Federal Government, we are unable to pursue.
The market would send the message that we need more supply, but the
regulators are in the way of making that happen.
In a State such as ours, as the Senator from South Dakota says, we
have to drive long distances. Agriculture is dependent upon natural gas
for fertilizer and fuel, for irrigation, and diesel fuel matters to us;
and we have many industries that consume energy in the creation of
manufactured products. Every time the price goes up, the ability to
create a new job goes down.
This country desperately needs an energy policy that is focused on
the production of energy, using our own resources to meet our own
country's needs. It is a significant and critical component if we are
going to get the economy back on track and have jobs created.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I say to my friend, I believe sincerely--
and I think he does--that we need a real all-of-the-above strategy. We
ought to be developing all forms of American energy, homegrown energy,
domestic energy. I appreciate it when the President of the United
States seizes upon that slogan and talks about supporting an all-of-
the-above strategy, but his policies tell another story. If you look at
things the Senator raised, such as increasing our domestic supply,
homegrown production, there are a series of things that would do that.
Approving the Keystone Pipeline would be the first one. It is right
there--20,000 shovel-ready jobs. It is a $7 billion initial investment,
with 800,000 barrels of oil coming to us from Canada, as opposed to
coming from Venezuela and Hugo Chavez and the Middle East. It is such a
no-brainer hanging out there for us to immediately act on.
Unfortunately, the administration said no to that. They also said no
to development in Alaska, no to offshore development, no to oil shale
development, no to streamlining permits, and no to new leases. All have
been put off limits, which are the very things that would increase the
supply and thereby address the issue the Senator mentioned, which is
that we have too much demand chasing too little supply and, therefore,
too high of a price, which bears on the pocketbooks of every single
American, every small business, every family.
We need a real all-of-the-above strategy, not just lipservice to it,
which is what we get out of this administration. It is an example----
[Disturbance in the Gallery.]
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Sergeant at Arms will restore
order in the Senate.
Mr. THUNE. This is an example of where public policy directly
influences economic outcome. There is no way you cannot argue that more
supply would lead to lower prices at the pump. For sure, more domestic
supply would lead to more American jobs. That is what we are talking
about today with jobs in the economy. That is why this issue bears
directly on it.
I appreciate my colleague from Kansas pointing out the impact it has
in his State on small businesses, farmers, and ranchers, who generally
have to drive long distances.
I will wrap up by simply saying again that we need to focus like a
laser on jobs. That is why I was pleased we were able to get the
majority leader and, after some time our leader to move to jobs. We
have lots of strategies mentioned that were going to be considered on
the Senate floor.
The real issue in the minds of the American people, in terms of
getting people back to work, is putting policies in place that will
enable and make it easier and less difficult and less costly to create
jobs.
Briefly, in addition to the bill the Senator from Kansas talked
about--his bill--my legislation, which is included in the JOBS package,
passed by 413 to 11. What it does is makes it easier for small and
growing businesses to solicit investors to help them raise the capital
they need to create jobs and, in the process, help our economy grow.
Specifically, it would remove a regulatory roadblock that is
currently preventing small businesses from reaching out to potential
accredited investors and thereby allowing these job creators to more
easily raise capital from accredited investors nationwide.
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This is commonsense legislation that will enable small businesses and
startup companies to better access the capital they need to expand and
create jobs.
My provision has a lot of support from American job creators around
the country. The Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council called it
``a long overdue solution that will widen the pool of potential funders
for entrepreneurs . . . to seek and secure the capital they need to
compete and grow. . . . Our economy will improve once entrepreneurs are
provided the tools, opportunities and incentives they need to hire and
invest.''
There are 175 Democrats in the House of Representatives who have
supported this bill as a stand-alone bill. It has been endorsed by the
SEC's Advisory Committee on Small and Emerging Companies. When it was
included in the broader JOBS bill in the House, it passed, as I said,
by a vote of 390 to 23. If job growth is our priority here in the
Senate, we should not delay on moving forward with this important job-
creating legislation.
I thank my colleague from Kansas for joining me on the floor today to
talk about the need to pass this JOBS Act and get it on the President's
desk, as he said he wanted in his State of the Union Address back in
January. It represents exactly what we should be doing here in
Washington; that is, creating a stable and productive economic
environment by easing regulatory burdens and unleashing economic
potential without adding to the national debt.
The Senator from Kansas very ably addressed in his remarks earlier
the importance of getting spending and debt under control, because that
does also create conditions that are favorable to small businesses to
invest. If there is uncertainty out there about what the Federal
Government is going to be doing in terms of borrowing and spending, it
creates a cloud under which it is very difficult for job creators to
create jobs.
I hope that my colleagues here in the Senate will support this
important piece of legislation and ensure job creators across the
country have access to the capital they need to hire and invest and
that we will start taking steps to address the impediments, the
barriers, the obstacles that are in place right now to the development
of domestic energy production that will ease the price at the pump and
make it more affordable for small businesses to invest in this country.
Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, just to conclude, I would like to thank and
commend the Senator from South Dakota for his leadership on these
issues and again express my pleasure that we are finally taking up
legislation that will make it easier for new businesses to raise
capital, creating a phase-in period for small, growing companies to
comply with government regulations that will help young businesses
expand and could ease the decision to go public, and, finally, to
update our securities laws that have been in place since the 1930s to
reflect a 21st-century marketplace so they can expand access to capital
for entrepreneurs to grow their businesses. And all this is done with
the goal of creating the circumstance where many will succeed.
I thank the Chair.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Delaware is
recognized.
Mr. COONS. I thank the Chair.
(The remarks of Mr. COONS pertaining to the introduction of S. 2194
are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills
and Joint Resolutions.'')
Mr. COONS. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, 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. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the
quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Brown of Ohio). Without objection, it is
so ordered.
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