Washington, DC –
U.S. Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD) today joined colleagues from the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, including Chairman Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), on the Senate floor to highlight the urgent need to help America’s small businesses get the credit and resources they need to thrive and create new jobs.
Senator Cardin’s full remarks can be found at
cardin.senate.gov
and
www.youtube.com/SenatorCardin
.
“As a country, we need to create jobs and the way to create jobs is to help small businesses. Too much of the focus over the last couple of years has been on helping large companies and large banks. We need to focus on small companies in order to create new job opportunities for Americans.
Sixty-four percent of the net new jobs over the past 15 years have come from small businesses. It’s where job growth will be in the future.
“Problem number one for small businesses is credit. Small companies can’t get traditional credit.
Many large banks have just closed out giving loans to small companies. As a result, many small companies resort to the use of their personal credit cards to finance their business. One-third of small companies have over 25 percent of their overall debt from credit cards and 50 percent of small business interest rates are 15 percent or higher. That’s not sustainable.
“We should look at how we can use some of the TARP funds to have the SBA make direct loans to small businesses, certainly as a backup, if the private-sector lenders are not going to show enough interest in helping our small businesses. I know that my colleagues from every state have heard from their small business owners that they can’t get affordable credit. We need to act decisively now, to get us out of this economic downturn quickly.”