Democratic Small Business Agenda

Floor Speech

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you. I want to thank the gentlelady from Pennsylvania and the gentleman from New York for the opportunity to discuss this critical issue of small business and jobs.

We know the statistics are very bad. But the discussion you two were having a moment ago used the word ``investment.'' And we talked about the American Reinvestment Act. It's now 13 months old. And it's absolutely critical that we always ponder investment because the investments that we can make at the government level will lead to short-term job growth as well as to long-term job growth and stability.

Years ago, we looked in California about how do you grow the California economy. I did a report on it. This was more than 25 years ago. And we noted that the history of California's great economic growth was centered on five things. The first and foremost of them was the enormous investment that was made in education, both in K-12 and community colleges and in the research institutions. It was that investment that gave the foundation. And here we are today with enormous disinvestment, backing away from that critical investment in education.

Now, the legislation that we talked about, the American Reinvestment Act, moved billions of dollars into the education sector so that we can continue to educate our kids at the universities and K-12 and the community colleges so that people who had lost their jobs could come back and learn the new skills, as you were saying, Mr. Tonko, the new skills in the green technology. Extraordinarily important investment in knowledge, investment in the ability of people to compete internationally.

Our friends on the Republican side say, No, we shouldn't have done that. So what are these people to do? They have lost their job. They don't have the opportunity to get new knowledge and new skills.

The second thing that we learned that was one that you also just talked about, the two of you a moment ago, about the necessity for research. It is in the research that the new jobs are created. Why? Because those are new products. Those are things that people demand and want and need for the growing economy. And in that is the high profit margin. And, again, for the first time, the Democratic Congress and the President--without the help of the Republicans--passed the greatest increase in research money in the last 20 years, putting money into research that will again lead to jobs sooner and later as the economy grows.

There are many other pieces of this. One that's before us is the health care legislation. I know a young couple in their mid-thirties that want to start their own business but they cannot leave the job that they have today because they know that as small business people, they will not be able to get health care insurance. They have two kids.

So these are things that we're bringing to the American public--last year, with the American Recovery

Act and now this year, as we look at how we're going to deal with health care. These are the critical investments that we need to make. And I thank you so very much for bringing this to our attention, to the attention of the American public.

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