[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 16142]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




   H.R. 674, REPEALING THE 3 PERCENT WITHHOLDING ON PAYMENTS MADE TO 
                     VENDORS BY GOVERNMENT ENTITIES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Dold) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DOLD. I came to this body as a small business owner, as someone 
who employs just under 100 people. For me, that's 100 families. I 
decided to run for Congress because it felt to me as if the Federal 
Government was making it harder and harder for me to put the key in the 
door and to open up my business each and every day. Frankly, they 
should be doing quite the opposite. We here in this body should be 
making it easier for American businesses to grow their businesses--to 
be able to hire more people, to invest back in their businesses and to 
grow.
  I am pleased to say that we have an opportunity this week to vote on 
a bipartisan piece of legislation to end some of the barriers that are 
preventing businesses from investing back in their businesses. We're 
going to have an opportunity to vote on H.R. 674, which would repeal a 
provision that would force government entities to withhold 3 percent 
from the vendors that they do business with.
  Earlier this year, we took care of some legislation that was some 
overburdensome regulation on 1099s for small businesses. This was going 
to be paperwork that was going to, in essence, cost small businesses 
hundreds of thousands of dollars and, in some cases, millions of 
dollars just to comply, just to cross the T's and dot the I's. Not a 
single bit would be added to their bottom line or would be helping 
provide services to consumers.
  There is no question that this bill would help small businesses. It 
would also help governments and municipalities that would be forced to 
withhold. This withholding requirement is particularly harmful to small 
businesses, to contractors; and it would undermine our efforts to spur 
job creation. This requirement needlessly ties up the cash flow of 
small businesses, and that's exactly what we don't need to do at this 
particular time.
  This is a commonsense piece of legislation, and I am confident that 
we will be able to pass it. We've got over 269 cosponsors today. Mr. 
Speaker, the gentleman who was just up here is, in fact, the lead 
cosponsor, Mr. Blumenauer, along with my colleague Wally Herger from 
California. It enjoys broad bipartisan support. It's commonsense 
legislation.
  We do not need to be taking dollars out of the economy at this point 
in time. It increases costs for goods and services. It increases the 
burdens on administrative requirements. It increases the costs for 
recordkeeping. This is another instance of unintended consequences of 
legislation and ones that, I think, we cannot afford.
  We must focus on how we can help small businesses across this land. 
We in this body need to create an environment where small businesses 
can have more certainty because, when I talk to businesses all across 
the 10th District of Illinois, the one thing I hear over and over and 
over again is that the uncertainty out there is preventing people from 
investing in their businesses, from moving forward. This would be yet 
one more burden. We don't need to do that.

                              {time}  1010

  So I'm pleased to see that Members on both sides of the aisle are 
coming together to try to solve some of these issues. It's certainly 
what the American public is looking for us to do, to be able to find 
some common ground, to move forward, so that we can eliminate some of 
these barriers. The number one issue we face, without exception, is 
jobs and the economy, so it seemed like common sense to me that we try 
to enable small business to be able to have the tools necessary to 
forecast, invest in their businesses and to grow.
  With 29 million small businesses in our Nation, if we can create an 
environment where half of those businesses can create a single job, 
think about where we'd be then. We've got 9.1 percent unemployment in 
our country. In Illinois it's at 10, and certain areas even in the 10th 
District we've got unemployment of 20 to 22 percent.
  We've just been recognized as the number one manufacturing district 
in the country. We've lost 750,000 manufacturing jobs in Illinois. We 
have to step up and allow small business to be able to invest back in 
their businesses and to grow.
  I'm delighted to see that we were able to come together 2 weeks ago 
on trade legislation to be able to help those manufacturers, to help 
farmers, to be able to increase exports and grow jobs right here in 
America. Those are exactly the efforts that we need to do.
  So I want to encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to 
come together on H.R. 674 to help small businesses move forward and get 
America back to work.

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