[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 19280-19283]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   UNANIMOUS-CONSENT REQUEST--S. 163

  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate 
proceed to Calendar No. 139, S. 163; that the committee-reported 
amendment be withdrawn, and I have a substitute amendment at the desk; 
that the Bond amendment to the substitute amendment be considered and 
agreed to, the substitute amendment, as amended, be agreed to, the 
motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that the bill, as 
amended, be read the third time; that the Senate then proceed to the 
consideration of H.R. 1361, the House companion, which is at the desk; 
that all after the enacting clause be stricken and the text of S. 163, 
as amended, be inserted in lieu thereof; that the bill be read the 
third time, passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the 
table; that the Senate insist on its amendment and request a conference 
with the House on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses; that the 
Chair be authorized to appoint conferees, with the Committee on Small 
Business and Entrepreneurship appointed as conferees; that S. 163 be 
returned to the calendar, and the above occurring without intervening 
action or debate.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there objection?
  Mr. DeMINT. On behalf of the Senator from Oklahoma, I object.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, let me speak for a minute about this 
legislation. I understand Senator DeMint's need to object on behalf of 
the Senator from Oklahoma. This is legislation that has broad--I do 
mean broad--bipartisan support. It was passed out of the Small Business 
and Entrepreneurship Committee on a unanimous vote. It now represents a 
very broad compromise worked on with the administration and with all of 
the members of the committee, both Republican and Democrat.
  I will review very quickly what this bill does. As everybody knows, 
when Katrina hit, we had a terrible time getting small business 
assistance to the countless thousands of small businesses that were 
impacted, not only in New Orleans but in Baton Rouge and across into 
Mississippi, Alabama, and elsewhere, where there were many services 
being provided by other folks. A lot of small businesses were impacted.
  We learned there was not an adequate capacity within the Small 
Business Administration to deliver this kind of assistance in a rapid 
way. So we have worked now, after a series of hearings and over the 
course of 2 years, to pull together the Small Business Disaster 
Response and Loan Improvement Act. It does a number of things.
  It creates a new elevated level of disaster declaration, referred to 
as catastrophic national disaster. That triggers nationwide economic 
injury disaster loans for adversely affected small businesses.
  In addition, it requires the SBA to create an expedited disaster 
assistance business loan program to provide businesses with expedited 
access to short-term money.
  A lot of the businesses in New Orleans could have survived and might 
have survived or chosen to try to if there had been some bridge money 
or available working capital. But the absence of it forced a lot of 
them to close their doors. If we can provide assistance in a timely 
fashion, obviously subject to the administration's approval--and there 
is discretion in the bill--we would have the ability to do a better 
job.
  In addition, there are improvements to the existing loan program 
which have been written in the bill. There is improved agency 
coordination and marketing. It directs the SBA to coordinate with FEMA 
in a more effective way. It directs the SBA to create a proactive 
marketing plan to make the public aware of the disaster response 
services.
  In addition, it provides improved planning and oversight and directs 
the SBA to update the hurricane response plan to address all future 
disasters.
  This is, as I say, with bipartisan support. I have a letter from the 
Administrator of the SBA, Steve Preston. He writes saying:

       I am writing to express my thanks for the efforts you and 
     your colleagues have made to work with the Small Business 
     Administration and to address the administration's concerns 
     with some of the provisions in S. 163, the Small Business 
     Disaster Response and Loan Improvement Act of 2007. At this 
     point, if amended by the Bond amendment--

And that is what we just sought to do--

     the administration has no objections to Senate passage of S. 
     163. However, the administration would consider a longer 
     extension of the authorization language in section 3 to avoid 
     the need for concern over unintended expiration of programs 
     and activities.

  We would obviously love to do that. It appears there is one person in 
the Senate, the Senator from Oklahoma, who is opposed to moving forward 
with this legislation. As I say, there was a unanimous vote by our 
committee, which wants to see if we could achieve

[[Page 19281]]

this disaster assistance. Nobody understands how critical this is more 
than the Senator from Louisiana, Ms. Landrieu, who has been fighting 
from the moment Katrina hit to try to get this kind of disaster 
assistance.
  I wish to ask the Senator if she would share with us her observations 
as to why this legislation is so critical and what specifically we have 
done to address some of the concerns of those who had previously 
expressed those concerns in order now to have a consensus about this 
legislation. I ask the Senator from Louisiana if she would explain the 
situation in New Orleans, not just then but now, and why this 
legislation is so critical.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts. 
I begin by saying that his leadership has been on point and so focused 
for the last 2 years in trying to help lead his committee, with the 
support and cooperation of his ranking member, the Senator from Maine, 
Ms. Snowe, to move Congress to adopt this important legislation.
  The Senator is absolutely correct that the SBA was one of several 
important Federal agencies that was caught flatfooted when Katrina and 
Rita hit the gulf coast and subsequently when the Federal levee system 
failed in multiple places, as the Senator from Massachusetts knows 
because he has walked through neighborhood after neighborhood, mile 
after mile, having visited with business owners and homeowners who lost 
everything they had, that took them generations to build. The Senator 
knows very well that this particular administration was anemic and very 
slow in its response. In fact, the gentleman leading it at the time was 
not the appropriate leader. To the President's credit, they have 
nominated and we have confirmed a new leader for the SBA.
  I think the Senator from Massachusetts will agree with me that the 
Director, Steve Preston, is making some very good and fundamental 
changes. But there is just so much this administrator can do without 
Congress doing its job to give him the tools he needs to get the job 
done.
  Why this legislation is being held up by the Republican side I am not 
sure. It is very disappointing, not just to me but to the millions of 
people who are affected and are still struggling, having lost 
everything or having at risk everything they own because we cannot seem 
to get legislation passed because of obstructionist tactics.
  I repeat, this bill is supported not only by the Chair but by the 
ranking member. In addition, both Senators from Louisiana are 
cosponsoring this bill, Senator Bill Nelson from Florida, who has 
experienced the disasters of hurricanes in Florida, and Senator Johnny 
Isakson from Georgia, who also has experienced disasters. This is not a 
Democratic bill being rammed down the Republican side of the aisle. 
This is a good Government efficiency, effective measure to try to 
reform the SBA. But because of bureaucratic delays, because of the 
inadequacy of the current law, we were not able to help the 18,000 
businesses that were destroyed, many of them--I would say 97 percent of 
them--small businesses.
  The Senator from Massachusetts and I together visited a cleaning 
business for hospital bedding and other items that was--I cannot think 
of the name of the business, but the Senator from Massachusetts and I 
walked throughout New Orleans East. This is one of hundreds of 
businesses that not only found themselves flooded, but when the waters 
receded, the hospitals they had serviced had closed. So basically 
through no fault of their own, they were struggling as well. This 
legislation will help them.
  This is not only important to the gulf coast and to the 18,000 
businesses, many of them small businesses, that need help and 
assistance, but it is for the future. The Senator from Massachusetts is 
saying let this Federal Government do better. If we believe business is 
important, and we do, and if we believe small business is important, 
and it is, then let's at least have our response honed and tuned to the 
point where if, God forbid, another huge disaster happens, we will be 
much more prepared than we were last time.
  Our constituents depend on us to be responsive. I say to the Senator 
from Massachusetts, that is exactly what this bill does. I again thank 
him for his leadership and express truly my outrage that this is being 
held up for no apparent good reason at the expense of thousands of 
business owners who are looking to us for help and support.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Louisiana. She has 
been not only a terrific member of the committee but has represented to 
the whole Senate countless numbers of times on the floor the plight of 
those folks down in New Orleans and in the immediate surrounding area.
  I wish to emphasize what she has said and what I said previously, and 
that is this has been worked on now for 2 years in a bipartisan way. 
Senator Snowe, the ranking member, who was, incidentally, the Chair 
when we first began working on this legislation, has supported the 
efforts to try to make certain that we address these concerns. Other 
Republican members of the committee have contributed significantly to 
this effort. Senator Bond had concerns about the energy program. We 
have addressed those concerns.
  I hope we can move forward. We tried actually to reach out to 
whatever opposition there is with respect to this bill. We are happy to 
sit down and address any legitimate concerns. But at this point, this 
is long overdue. We are into the hurricane season now, about a month 
and a half into it. Our predictors have been pretty accurate in these 
past years, and they are suggesting we are going to have a very 
significant number of named storms and maybe as many as 10 projected 
full-blown hurricanes this year, with 13 to 17 named storms.
  Last year, they hit the number of named storms and hurricanes, but we 
were very lucky; they didn't blow into the shore and we didn't get hit. 
Obviously, we cannot sit around and be lucky all the time. We cannot 
afford another Katrina-like response. There are specific actions this 
legislation empowers the SBA to do to take steps proactively, to be in 
a position to address the concerns of small businesses rapidly. In 
addition, this bill helps private lenders get in early on and be 
immediately on the scene and assist in the process of providing those 
loans. So it streamlines that process.
  I wish to comment on Senator Landrieu's reference to that cleaning 
place we visited in East New Orleans. We made arrangements to go down 
and see that place because we knew it needed help. We had talked with 
the CEO before going there. About a week and a half later, when we got 
there, we went into this cleaning facility, which had been completely 
flooded, as the Senator said. They cleaned it out themselves. They 
worked diligently to get the equipment up and working, what they could. 
Much of it was ruined and was going to have to be disposed of. But 
these folks were working this place.
  Since they were dependent on the services of hotels and others for 
the work they did, they were at the time mostly doing the hospitals 
that had reopened, and that was it. But the CEO was so despairing in 
the span of that week and a half or so between our making the 
appointment and getting there that when we arrived, the CEO had left 
with his family, taken off; that was it, he had enough, and left in 
charge was one of the workers who was the ``acting CEO'' who was 
desperately trying to hold onto this business.
  When people are working like that and run into that kind of 
desperation, we have to be able to look them in the eye and say we have 
done everything possible. We put in place the mechanisms they pay for 
and that they have a right to expect will be there to assist in that 
kind of an emergency. That is what we are trying to do here, in a 
bipartisan way, to make certain we don't lose CEOs, lose jobs, lose 
workers, and lose hope as a consequence of our inaction in the Senate. 
So I hope we are going to be able to come back to this in short order. 
As I say, I think we have worked in good faith with every legitimate 
question that has been raised with respect to this legislation. We will 
happily sit down if another Senator

[[Page 19282]]

still has a concern, but we certainly will not tolerate--and at some 
point I hope the leader will allow us to take the time in the Senate to 
continue on the floor with this legislation. There is one Senator who 
is opposing it, without any rationale whatsoever.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. May I add something, if the Senator will yield?
  Mr. KERRY. I will yield to the Senator.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. We have all learned many things since this disaster 
happened, and one of the things we have learned, I guess rather 
painfully, is that it is not only the geographic area that is struck by 
the high wind, the high waters or the flood waters that is impacted by 
a catastrophic disaster, but it is also the perimeter of the area, the 
towns that absorb people fleeing to higher ground and trying to settle 
where they can find work and schools for their children, and businesses 
that might not have been directly impacted but have lost half or 75 
percent of their customer base.
  Right now, without Senator Kerry's bill, there is virtually no 
authorization on the Federal books to allow loans to be made to these 
kinds of businesses. So because we don't have that authorization, we 
are, right now, basically making the disaster worse. I hope people can 
understand this. We, by our inaction, by our hardheadedness--and it is 
not me, although I can be hardheaded but not on this issue--because of 
some leadership decision on the Republican side, we are literally, 
right now, making this matter worse. Businesses are continuing to go 
out of business; businesses that didn't have a drop of water, 
businesses that didn't have one shingle let loose from the high wind 
continue to file bankruptcy and put up out-of-business signs because 
there is no provision to allow low-interest loans to them if they 
weren't directly impacted. Unfortunately, they are directly impacted in 
terms of loss of customers, et cetera.
  In addition, it is going to bring in the private sector. We heard a 
lot from the other side about Government can't do everything; let the 
private sector be engaged. Well, your bill allows for more private-
sector involvement; does it not? It allows the banks that know these 
small businesses to be a part of helping them. This is what the 
business community wants, this is what the banks want, and this is what 
we recognized was a problem initially.
  Yet we are being blocked, I understand, by the Senator from Oklahoma, 
who has not made his specific objections clear to us. So I hope they 
can be made clear, and if we can fix it, fine. If not, then the 
leadership on the Republican side, I would say to the Senator from 
Massachusetts, has a decision: Do they want to be part of the 
nonsensical opposition by a Senator who is in Oklahoma, who is never 
going to have a hurricane or do they want to stand with the people in 
America from New York to Texas who are threatened every 9 months with a 
hurricane season.
  That is the decision the Republican leader from Kentucky is going to 
have to answer. Is he going to support a bipartisan piece of 
legislation that aids businesses that are literally threatened from New 
York to Texas or is he going to stand with some nonsensical opposition 
coming from the middle of the country that will never be hit by a 
hurricane.
  I hate to be so pointed about it, but that is basically where it is. 
This is 2 years after the storm. This isn't 2 months or 6 months after. 
This is a bill that Senator Snowe herself started and Senator Kerry is 
finishing, and the people of the gulf coast are still waiting. So this 
is a real leadership question, and I hope that as the day goes by and 
the week goes by, we can make some progress, and I thank the Senator 
for his leadership.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Louisiana. As I 
said previously, she has been tireless on this. Louisiana has been 
lucky to have her intervention every step of the way. The billions of 
dollars that have gone down there is a consequence of the hard work she 
has done.
  Let me summarize what is being obstructed. First, expedited 
assistance from the SBA to small businesses injured by a disaster; 
second, private disaster loans. Private disaster loans. The ability of 
private-sector lenders to become involved in the process quickly, 
extending credit to the folks who need it as a consequence of that 
disaster, which, incidentally, can only occur when the President of the 
United States has legitimately declared a disaster; third, improvements 
to the existing program; why we wouldn't want to improve the existing 
program after we saw how it was incapable of meeting the problems of 
Katrina is beyond me. That is what we are doing here in a complete and 
total bipartisan, unanimous committee vote that suggests these 
improvements are important and will make a difference; improved agency 
coordination in marketing. These are the things that make a difference. 
When you can get the bureaucracy out of the way, when you can 
streamline, you are getting better production for the taxpayers' 
dollars, and that is exactly what we are doing; improved planning and 
oversight and disaster assistance staffing, necessary to be able to 
deliver the services because we didn't have sufficient personnel to be 
able to process the loan requests that came in.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
a letter from the Small Business Administrator, Steve Preston.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                           U.S. Small Business Administration,

                                    Washington, DC, June 29, 2007.
     Hon. John F. Kerry,
     Chairman, Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, 
         U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
       Dear Mr. Chairman: I am writing to express my thanks for 
     the efforts you and your colleagues have made to work with 
     the U.S. Small Business Administration and to address the 
     Administration's concerns with some of the provisions in S. 
     163, ``The Small Business Disaster Response and Loan 
     Improvements Act of 2007''.
       At this point, if amended by the Bond Amendment, the 
     Administration has no objections to Senate passage of S. 163. 
     However, the Administration would request a longer extension 
     of the authorization language in section 3 to avoid the need 
     for concern over unintended expiration of programs and 
     activities. We would also recommend clarifying that the 
     Administrator would have flexibility under section 205 to 
     designate portions of a declared catastrophic national 
     disaster area as a HUBZone area, without extending this 
     designation to an entire disaster area.
       We look forward to working with you when the bill goes into 
     conference discussions with the U.S. House of 
     Representatives. If you have any questions or comments, 
     please contact me directly.
           Sincerely yours,
                                                Steven C. Preston.

  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the 
absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to 
speak for 20 minutes as in morning business.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I further ask unanimous consent that the 
next Democratic Speaker be Senator Kennedy of Massachusetts; with the 
understanding that if a Republican Member wishes to speak, they would 
be permitted to do so between any majority speakers.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there objection?
  Mr. McCAIN. I object. My understanding is that at 11 a.m., we were 
supposed to go to the bill. We are now, at 11:15, going to go to the 
bill, and then we want the regular procedure as we consider 
legislation, which would be whoever has the right of recognition and 
any unanimous consent agreements.
  So I object to the second unanimous consent request.

[[Page 19283]]

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from Connecticut.

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