[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 3]
[House]
[Page 3019]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                JOBS ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Michigan (Mr. Huizenga) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HUIZENGA of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity 
to address the House and to address the Nation today.
  As a small business owner, I know the importance of fostering and 
creating an environment that promotes job creation, economic security 
and opportunity, and allows especially small businesses to grow.
  I also know that Americans and Michiganders and those in the Second 
District in my home State of Michigan and across the country are 
looking for real solutions that will grow jobs now. That's why I 
support the JOBS Act. It will jump-start our economy and restore 
opportunities for America's primary job creators: our small businesses, 
start-ups, and entrepreneurs.
  Now, I've been around long enough in my first year here, Mr. Speaker, 
to unfortunately see that sometimes you have to repackage ideas and put 
a different colored bow on it for people to accept it because what 
we're going to be passing has been passed. I sit on the Financial 
Services Committee. We've passed a number of these bills--and all of 
these bills, I believe. That's part of the America's Job Creators Plan 
that the House Republicans have put forward. But what we're doing today 
is we are going to be putting this JOBS Act; it's compromised of six 
bills that have been approved by the committee. Very quickly, those six 
bills are:
  One, Reopening the American Capital Markets to Emerging Growth 
Companies Act. What that's going to do is it's going to allow temporary 
relief from some of the onerous SEC, or Securities and Exchange 
Commission, regulations that are on those small businesses.
  Number two, the Access to Capital for Job Creators Act is going to 
allow small companies to raise capital by, again, removing some of 
those regulatory bans that are in there and that say that a small 
business can't use advertisements to go try to get and attract 
investors. Well, in an age of Internet and those kinds of things, that 
has a huge impact. It also brings along a concept that's been out there 
called crowdfunding.
  That's the third bill, Entrepreneur Access to Credit Act. It is also 
going to ease the requirements that allow things like crowdfunding, 
people being able to go and spread this out on Facebook and Twitter and 
Internet and to their friends, to pull in those small-dollar investors 
that are going to be able to give them the capital that they need to 
launch that innovative idea.
  Well, the fourth is the Small Company Capital Formation Act. It 
allows small businesses to go public by elevating the threshold that 
companies are exempt from $5 million to $50 million. That is going to 
be able to really, truly impact those small entrepreneurs and small 
business owners who are looking to take their business to the next 
step.
  The fifth one is the Private Company Flexibility and Growth Act. 
That's expected to give small companies more room to grow before having 
to go public. Currently, there's a regulation that says you can have no 
more than 500 investors in your small company. This doubles that. This 
says you can have up to 1,000. We believe that that is also going to be 
able to allow those small businesses who are in transition, who are in 
that acquisition mode, who are in that growth mode, to be able to go up 
there and be successful.
  Finally, number six, the Capital Expansion Act would increase the 
number of shareholders allowed to invest in a community bank from 500 
to 2,000. Why would we include this part? Well, community banks really 
are the backbone of many of those small investors. They're the ones 
that they go to church with and shop at the grocery store with. They 
know their businesses. They may know that it's been a long-term 
relationship with that local community bank. By being able to expand 
the footprint of those community banks, we're going to be able to 
expand their lending power as well to those small businesses.
  Well, it's interesting that here we actually have a bipartisan 
package of bills. This isn't just something that's the Republicans' 
ideas. In fact, in the Financial Services Committee, we had this as 
bipartisan votes. And really, it truly is going to help create a 
healthier environment for small businesses to hire and expand.

                              {time}  1040

  In fact, President Obama's administration released what's called a 
Statement of Administration Policy yesterday supporting this very act. 
We welcome his support and recognition of this bill's innovative 
solutions to ensure that small businesses can access capital needed to 
expand, hire, and invest. And again, that's because you, the American 
people, we here in the House of Representatives are looking for those 
real honest solutions.
  Well, it's far time that we get government out of the way of small 
businesses as well, the engine of our economy. We need to focus on the 
real economy, and our priority has to be that focus.
  According to the Kauffman Foundation, start-up companies created 
nearly 40 million jobs, 40 million jobs since 1980, and the Small 
Business Administration shows small businesses generate over 60 percent 
of all the new jobs created here in the U.S. Sixty percent of all those 
jobs that we are hoping to have in this country are created by these 
small businesses.
  In fact, even the World Bank has a report. It's called ``Doing 
Business,'' and it showed that the United States has fallen to 13th for 
the ``ease of starting a business.''
  So with that, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this as a key to lasting, 
honest economic recovery. And we need--America needs--these real jobs, 
real solutions, and real results right now.

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