Floor Statements

Madam Chair, I rise in opposition.

Madam Chair, I certainly appreciate my colleagues, Ms. McCollum and Mr. Kingston, and what they're trying to achieve, and I certainly support paring down the budget where it is appropriate and where it actually saves money.

My colleague references some numbers that come from the Army. The Army is getting out of this type of sponsorship. The numbers that I want to give you are from the National Guard that intends to stay in this form of advertising for recruiting purposes and also for building goodwill among the American people.

This sponsorship program that the National Guard has, in one form, one very specific form of sponsorship that they have, as well as a number of others, but this one form of sponsorship for NASCAR, the National Guard saw a nearly 300 percent return on their investment. Now, that comes from $68 million in media exposure. It comes from 5.5 million pieces of merchandise and apparel that has ``National Guard'' on it, which has a value of roughly $70 million. This is a huge return for the buck. This is why Fortune 500 companies actually advertise through NASCAR--not because it feels good, but because it delivers results.

And the fact is that no matter the size of the military, you're going to still need recruits. And the fact remains, if we look at the example of 2005 where the Army didn't meet their recruiting goals, what we had to do is increase the budget for retention. So the fact of cutting one area of recruiting means that in a couple of years we'll have to actually pay more for retention in order to keep the same folks in the National Guard that we currently need.

Furthermore, back to this one particular form of advertising, I think it's highly inappropriate for this Congress to get into the business of specifying how best the National Guard, or whatever branch, should spend their dollars on recruiting.

The Appropriations Committee has done a yeoman's task of making sure that we scrub the Department of Defense budget from top to bottom. I think this is a very strong and good appropriations bill. It does have bipartisan support. But let's face it, when we start micromanaging advertising programs to try to recruit National Guard members, we've sort of slipped into the absurd.

The National Guard, from the experience that they've had in NASCAR advertising in particular, they generated 54,000 leads. I wish my colleague had referenced that other than these other numbers that you referenced before, which I think are a good reason why the Army is not continuing with that program. They didn't design it appropriately, apparently. But the National Guard has got a huge bang for the buck and has actually gotten recruits because of this form of advertising.

I would encourage my colleagues, if they voted ``no'' on the McCollum amendments last year--there were two different amendments that deal with this very same issue. If they voted ``no'' on those two amendments, they need to vote ``no'' again.

Madam Chairman, I would say this again. If you voted ``no'' on those two amendments that are structurally the same, vote ``no'' again. I would encourage my colleagues to do that, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, the Master from Flint Hill, the Innovator of the Three-Finger Banjo Style--these are the names given to one of North Carolina and my congressional district's favorite sons.

Mr. Speaker, the welcome sign for the city of Shelby in my district says: ``Welcome to Shelby, city of pleasant living, home of Earl Scruggs.''

Indeed, Shelby, Cleveland County, and all of North Carolina, and indeed the Nation, are mourning the loss of musical icon Earl Scruggs, who passed away last month at the age of 88. When you think of the word ``bluegrass,'' a few names come to mind: Bill Monroe, Doc Watson, and, of course, Earl Scruggs.

Earl grew up on a farm in the Flint Hill community in Shelby and worked in the Lily cotton mill. That's until he was given the chance to play in Bill Monroe's band. That led him to quickly strike off on his legendary career with Lester Flatt. Together, Flatt and Scruggs defined bluegrass music in the 1950s and the 1960s, recording such classics as ``The Ballad of Jed Clampitt'' and ``Foggy Mountain Breakdown.''

Earl received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003, was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1985, and received numerous Grammys, including the Lifetime Achievement Award. He also recorded with musicians as diverse as Johnny Cash, Sting, and even Elton John.

Most importantly for his beloved hometown of Shelby, his legend will live on locally.

Thanks to an overwhelming community effort for the past several years, work is now under way to turn the historic 105-year-old Cleveland County Courthouse into the Earl Scruggs Center. This effort will focus on music and stories and preserve the legacy of Earl Scruggs.

Drawing on the region's rich history and music, the Scruggs Center will enlighten, educate, and celebrate the people, traditions, and values of Cleveland County and the region, for that matter, all the while honoring Earl Scruggs.

Legendary comedian and accomplished banjo player Steve Martin summed up Earl's legacy best when he said, ``Before him, no one had ever played the banjo like he did. After him, everybody played the banjo like he did, or at least tried.''

Imitation is the kindest form of flattery, and, indeed, Earl Scruggs has many folks that try to emulate what he created. He will be missed.

I thank the chairman for yielding.

Our Nation is at a crossroads. This President wants to take more money from the private sector and continue the exponential growth of the Federal Government. We want to make sure that job creators are able to reinvest their hard-earned money back into their businesses to expand and grow the economy and get this job creation cycle going again. That's why we support a 20 percent tax cut for small businesses. The President, on the other hand, wants to raise taxes on small businesses and job creators.

There are 22 million small businesses helped by this bill, and I think it's necessary that we pass this bill today. I urge my colleagues to support a 20 percent tax cut for small businesses so we can create jobs and make a more prosperous America.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate Ms. Shari Brown for receiving the 2012 Toyota Teacher of the Year Award. This award, presented by the National Center for Family Literacy, annually recognizes an educator in a program that has a strong record of increasing meaningful parent engagement and family learning.

Shari is a family literacy coordinator and instructor at Caldwell Community College serving Lenoir and other cities and towns in my congressional district. The program, which serves approximately 50 families each year and has another 30 on the waiting list, has a strong record of success. Children in the program tend to enter school six to eighteen months more advanced than average, and children for whom English is a second language enter kindergarten at the same, if not at a higher level, than their non-ESL peers, requiring no accommodations. Furthermore, adult students have a 94% persistence rate, and numerous ESL students move from the lowest levels of ESL to graduation with a GED and enter college.

Shari will use the $20,000 grant that comes with the award to create a local community garden project where families will learn to grow, harvest and preserve their own food. Families will also participate in local farmer's markets, preparing nutritious meals utilizing the food they grow, supplemented with surplus commodities. Furthermore, they will study good nutrition and how to combat obesity in their family members. Lastly, families will have the opportunity to learn about culinary and horticultural career choices. Both of these industries have been identified as high-growth employment areas in Caldwell County, North Carolina.

Shari's recognition through this award is to be commended. Ms. Brown works every day to help families become self-sufficient and better able to help their children learn and grow academically in school. Thank you to the National Center for Family Literacy for recognizing one of our great community assets in Caldwell County.

Mr. Speaker, today I want to talk about something that is very important, a great opportunity for this Congress to lift the red tape from Washington and allow the entrepreneurial spirit of America to take hold.

We know that, 3 years into an economic recovery, America's labor and capital markets continue with unprecedented challenges. Entrepreneurship is at a 17-year low. Deeply troubling, as we know, is that 40 million jobs since 1980 have been created by small businesses or start-ups. What is interesting about this is that those are the folks

that are likely to fail when you create a small business. But still, we have netted 40 million new jobs out of this one sector over the last 30 years.

Fixing this mess that we've seen in this recent downturn won't happen overnight, and there is no silver bullet for fixing it; but we have to recognize that America has seen the world catch up, catch up to what once was the most vibrant capital market on the planet here in the United States. The world has caught up because they see what that does in terms of job creation. They have caught up in terms of regulation, and they allow capital to flow more easily in other jurisdictions around the world.

We also know, according to the World Bank, that the Doing Business report found that the U.S. fell from third to 13th in the ease of starting new businesses. It's fallen that quickly just in the last 5 years. And because of Dodd-Frank, credit is less available and more costly than it was before. We have restricted the opportunity for businesses to get the lending that they need.

At the same time, we haven't updated our securities regulations in the United States in 80 years. There has been no significant rewrite since the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934. They put in place restrictions that were right at the time. You had this new technology called the telephone. You had folks hawking securities on street corners in New York, and so they wrote regulations at the time that were applicable to the time.

We know that the Internet is a fully mature ecosystem now. We know that billions of dollars are transacted just on eBay alone. People have an online reputation with social networks that they can utilize. We want to take that power and actually allow businesses to use that power of the Internet and social networks. That's why I filed, and this House passed, the Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act that provides those updates, so you can actually have crowdfunding.

What is crowdfunding? crowdfunding is the best of microfinancing and crowdsourcing. You use a wide network of individuals and you can raise capital for your new business, your start-up, or your small business. We passed that and sent it to the Senate.

The Senate didn't do anything, they didn't act, so we repackaged the bill and put it within the JOBS Act. This House passed it with an overwhelming majority of nearly 400 votes. We sent it to the Senate and the Senate changed a few small provisions and is sending it back this week. We hope to pass that bill this week and send it to the President's desk.

What the legislation for crowdfunding does is remove that restriction on communicating, which the Securities Act of 1933 puts in place, and lifts the cap on investors that the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 provides for.

So, crowdfunding is a great opportunity for small businesses to raise equity. Unfortunately, the Senate decided to amend a few small provisions within this crowdfunding act that we were able to pass here in the House, I believe a few misguided, ill-informed provisions: one, expanding liability provisions for issuances of crowdfunding securities, and, number 2, banning general solicitation, which means that a company can't put up on their Facebook or post on their Twitter account, they can't tweet the fact that they're trying to raise capital. I think those restrictions are flawed and misguided, and I would ask the Senate to come around to fixing these provisions.

I think it's very important the House pass the JOBS Act this week so we can make capital formation more democratic, more in touch with the market as it is today. And so I ask my colleagues to vote for the JOBS Act, and I ask the President to sign this bill so that we can help capital formation in the United States and get people working again.

Mr. Speaker, my constituents in western North Carolina and my neighbors and I are really upset about what's happening at the price of gasoline at the pumps.

What we see out of this administration and what we see out of some extreme environmentalists is an unwillingness to tap our natural resources to relieve the price at the pumps today. We've seen out of this administration Solyndra. We've seen scandal after scandal with this green energy policy lending coming out of the stimulus from a couple of years ago and out of liberal policies in Washington.

What my constituents want to see is real exploration so that we can lower the price at the pumps. That's what we deserve, and that's an action that I ask this administration to take.

I thank the chairman, and I appreciate the opportunity to address the crowdfunding section of this bill.

One year ago, Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa sent a letter with 33 questions to the Securities and Exchange Commission asking them to justify outdated securities laws that restrict capital formation and stunted job growth. It was a letter that really challenged the Commission's complacency and asked them about these 80-year-old regulations that were modern at the time where the new invention was the telephone and asked them if they had ways to update them.

One question specifically asked Chairman Schapiro if she had considered creating an exemption to enable everyday investors to invest, with reasonable limitations, in unregistered securities issued by start-ups. This is known as ``crowdfunding.''

At the time, I was only familiar with crowdfunding--which is a hybrid of microfinance and crowdsourcing--as a charitable method. It's done around the world, with billions of dollars of moneys raised. For example, a local brewery in my home State of North Carolina was able to raise $44,000 on a platform called Kickstarter. Now, that's done on the charitable side; but with crowdfunding, the success we see on the charitable side can be brought over on the investor side, on the equity side, of capital raising. We recognized the consequences of Dodd-Frank that limit the ability to get lending through traditional means and as a way to promote small business capital formation. Crowdfunding relieves part of that pressure.

In September of last year, after countless meetings, conferences, congressional hearings, and bipartisan negotiation, I introduced the Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act. The bill was simple and direct. It offered a means of capital formation that would forgo costly SEC and State registration if issuers and investors operated within reasonable limitations. Most importantly, the foundation of the legislation upheld investor protections by empowering regulators to prosecute those who participated in securities fraud or deceit. That is preserved.

In the Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act, our focus was on market innovation and investor protection to attract both political parties and well-known market participants to the table. As a result of that bipartisan bill, we had over 400 Members on this floor vote for that bill, the President said he would sign that bill, and we sent it over to the Senate with thousands of market participants saying it was good.

This year, that same language was included as a provision within this legislation, the JOBS Act. Regrettably, just before the House-passed version of the JOBS Act received an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor, a handful of Senators misunderstood the spirit and the promise of crowdfunding, resulting in last-minute changes to the bill.

Our essential framework is preserved for crowdfunding. Rather than recognizing that crowdfunding could create new markets and opportunities for small businesses and start-ups, these misguided Senators simply saw crowdfunding as unregulated activities. This misperception caused them to design a crowdfunding title that is riddled with burdens on issuers, investors, and intermediaries and limits general solicitation and enhances SEC rulemaking authority.

But, fortunately, as I said, the basic architecture of the Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act, crowdfunding, that bipartisan measure that we took through committee markup and House floor action, is preserved. Although I'm disappointed by the ill-conceived and burdensome changes within the crowdfunding title of this bill, I stand committed to working across the aisle to make sure that we fix this after the President signs it. That's what we intend to do.

I urge my colleagues to vote for this bill and move forward.

Will the gentleman yield?

I appreciate it.

I've been working on legislation similar to this. If the gentleman would withdraw, I would be happy to work with him to find legislative language that could be acceptable to all sides, including to national security interests.

I have an amendment printed in the rule.

Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

This amendment is very simple. We know, and policymakers in Washington here know, that entrepreneurship is at a 17-year low in the United States. We also know that small businesses are the drivers of our economy. So what this amendment does is it enables investors to connect with start-ups.

It takes away some red tape that is within securities regulations, and it allows incubators, forums, and online platforms which only connect accredited investors to start-ups to be exempt from SEC registration as a broker-dealer if they, number one, do not charge a commission or fee for their service; number two, do not handle the moneys of investors; and, number three, only permit accredited investors to use their platforms.

This is a very narrow amendment, very specifically crafted. In fact, the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness in October of last year said in their report that the emergence of angel investors and networks have also played a crucial role in initial funding of companies, and that the council recommends that clarifying that experience and active seed in angel investors and their meeting venues should not be subject to the regulations that were designed to protect inexperienced investors.

This amendment deals with that subject matter within the President's jobs council recommendations. I ask my colleagues to support this amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I am prepared to close.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I appreciate the more conciliatory tone in today's debate. It's fantastic, Madam Chair, to have the ranking member back in debating form today and permitted to debate on the House floor.

This amendment is about investors, incubators, and start-ups. We've got wide endorsements from 155 folks from across America--both investor level, we have incubators, we have online platforms and forums that have endorsed this, including the founder of AOL, Steve Case, the founder of Netscape, Marc Andreessen, who is also a renowned investor in Silicon Valley.

This is a great amendment that clarifies something that's very important for us to update in securities laws. I certainly appreciate the support across the aisle for this important issue as well. I'm glad it can be passed with bipartisan support.

With that, I ask my colleagues to vote ``yes.''

I yield back the balance of my time.

I want to thank my colleague, Mr. Sessions, for his leadership on the Rules Committee and otherwise in this House. I also want to commend Mr. Fincher from Tennessee for offering this legislation. It's a very important bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to support and speak in favor of the JOBS Act. What this legislation does is address a key concern that I hear from my constituents in western North Carolina.

We know that entrepreneurship here in the United States is at a 17- year low. We also realize that the rest of the world has caught up to us in terms of their capital markets and business formation. We also know that small businesses create the majority of new jobs in the United States. So it's very important for us, in light of the new regulatory changes that have happened in the last couple of years here in Washington--the advent of Dodd-Frank that increases the cost of lending and makes it less available for small businesses, the CARD Act that makes credit cards less available to the average person who tries to start their business, like my father did, on his credit card. We also realize that the regulatory changes, the more, higher red tape that we have here in Washington makes it

more expensive to do business here in the United States.

These are major concerns. These are major concerns for my constituents in western North Carolina.

I want to commend Mr. Fincher for offering the JOBS Act. We've got some very important pieces of information and policy changes in this bill.

If you look at the 1990s, we had 530 IPOs, on average, every year. We had fewer than 65 in the year 2009. We realize that going public is not the avenue for every business, though the dream of many small business folks. So an important component of the JOBS Act is a piece of legislation we passed that I authored here in the House, with the help of my colleague from New York (Mrs. Maloney), the crowdfunding act, which allows small businesses to access the capital markets to sell equity, rather than ask for debt, sell equity in their great start-up or new idea.

Crowdfunding takes the best of microfinance and crowdsourcing and uses the power of the Internet for small businesses to have offerings in their company. Now, it could be used for a tech company, certainly, to raise up to $2 million, but it could be used for a coffee shop in Hickory or in Asheville in western North Carolina to raise $50,000 and sell equity in their business.

These regulatory changes are very important. We have regulations and laws on the books--the 1933 Securities Act, the 1934 Securities and Exchange Act--that really were the reaction to the problems and challenges of their day.

They put in restrictions in terms of advertising about your security. Well, that was a problem when the telephone was the new technology of the day. But we have the power of the Internet, and people are more informed today than they were 100 years ago about investing. So we're changing these regulatory structures so that small businesses can get the capital they need to grow and expand. That's what this is all about.

It doesn't fix every problem that we face today, but this is a bipartisan bill. It's a good idea. The President has spoken in favor of many of the components of this legislation, and we hope, not to simply pass it out of the House on a bipartisan basis, but to ensure that we pass it through the Senate and the President signs it.

These are good ideas that can have an impact and help us grow and create jobs. It helps entrepreneurs. It helps small businesses. Those folks are the lifeblood of economic growth, and that's what we need to be focused on.

I urge the adoption of the rule, and ask my colleagues to vote for passage.

Madam Chairman, I want to thank my colleague, Mr. Hensarling, for his leadership on the Financial Services Committee, and I want to thank my colleague, Mr. Fincher, for offering the legislation before us today.

The American people understand that entrepreneurship is at a record low, that it's actually at a 17-year low in the United States. We know that small businesses create the majority of new jobs in our country and have done so for generations. We also know that we have record unemployment. We've had 8 percent unemployment for a record 36 months at that very high level. It's not acceptable. We have to do something.

Now, we cannot fix everything in one piece of legislation. This idea that you can have just simply a large bill that fixes all the problems in the world simply is not in accordance with American history or what the American people want and desire.

But we also know, and the American people understand, especially small business folks and entrepreneurs understand, that red tape gets in the way of job creation. We saw with the Dodd-Frank Act that it restricts lending and makes it more costly to get lending. If you talk to small business folks, their one biggest complaint is a restriction on access to capital. That's on the debt side.

We also see that we have regulations and laws written in 1933 and 1934 in an era when the telephone was the new technology of the day.

We need to update those regulations. That is at the heart of what this JOBS Act does. It doesn't simply say about debt fundraising; it says on the equity side that you can go around the red tape and actually allow the average, everyday investor access to the capital markets and the new, great ideas of the future.

This is what the legislation is about. I urge my colleagues to vote for it, and I ask my colleagues to move forward on this, especially in the Senate.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 79, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.''

Personal Explanation

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that when the House adjourns today, it adjourn to meet at 11 a.m. on Friday, January 27, 2012, and further when the House adjourns on that day, it adjourn to meet at noon on Tuesday, January 31, 2012, for morning-hour debate and 2 p.m. for legislative business.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Budget have until 3 p.m. on Monday, January 30, 2012, to file reports on the following measures: H.R. 3582, H.R. 3578, and H.R. 3581.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan) be authorized to insert extraneous material in the Record.