Brooklyn's Progress
February/March 2007

BY GENIA GOULD
 
On Jan. 23, the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce celebrated Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez’s recent appointment to the position of Chairwoman of the Congressional Committee on Small Business at a congressional breakfast held at Grand Prospect Hall. The congresswoman, who was the keynote speaker at the event, talked to a crowd of an estimated 200 Chamber Members and friends about her plans for the committee.
 
Congresswoman Velázquez is the first Hispanic woman to chair a full congressional committee. Since winning her first election in 1992, Congresswoman Velázquez has served eight terms as the representative of New York’s 12th district that covers parts of Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan’s Lower East Side, becoming the ranking democrat on the Small Business Committee in 1998. She is also the most senior New York Member of the Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity.
 
“Congresswoman Velázquez's appointment as Chair of the Small Business Committee is not only historic, but very good news for small businesses across the country,” said Brooklyn Chamber’s Interim President Mark Kessler. “The Congresswoman has long been a smart and tenacious advocate for small businesses. Now that she has the gavel, she will be able to implement the long needed initiatives she described. It is reassuring to know the Congresswoman is there, she represents Brooklyn and understands the needs of Brooklyn's businesses very well. I am confident she will protect and promote our interests, which, after all, are not very different from other small business communities in other urban areas.”

The congresswoman enthusiastically explained her agenda and her plans to address the needs of small businesses across the country. Providing more access to capital, lightening the tax burden on small businesses, creating new opportunities by helping small firms compete for work in the federal sector, and exploring new tax incentive programs are high on her list.
 
“What happens in Washington impacts small business across the country,” said the congresswoman. Her role as head of the only federal organization devoted solely to the needs of small business, she said, is to improve the economic environment for the 26 million small businesses across the country. “It is not a partisan issue,” she said, adding she has collaborated successfully with committee members from both parties. “Any legislation initiated in any committee that has anything to do with small business I will have a hand in,” she said.
 
The congresswoman vowed to revamp the Small Business Administration and its programs to make it “the powerhouse it once was and should be now.” The chairwoman will have her hands full recouping losses suffered during the past six years, when the Small Business Administration, a low priority in the Bush administration, suffered a 40% cut to its budget – which in effect means the agency budget went from a $1.1 billion under the Clinton administration to the $624 million it currently receives.
 
The SBA’s 7a loan program, in operation since 2002, was once funded by the government, now businesses pay higher interest fees to fund their own loans as loan sizes shrink. 

Congresswoman Velázquez vowed to bring increased oversight to the Small Business Administration (SBA) which was harshly criticized in the months following Hurricane Katrina. As a follow up to the SBA’s Hurricane Katrina debacle, where only 20% of small businesses received financial help, the new chair says she wants to revamp the agency’s Disaster Loan Programs, “There were a lot of delays and businesses weren’t getting the assistance they needed which they had been promised.”

Further, she has initiated hearings to discover why $12 billion worth of federal contracts intended for small businesses went to big businesses instead. “It is clear we need to restore accountability into the current system, and open up the federal marketplace to small firms.”
 
"She's always fighting to ensure Women's Business Centers, which have seen budget cuts in the past couple years, receive adequate funding, and she also created the Women's Procurement Program, which was signed into law in 2001 to make sure women-owned businesses get their fair share of federal contracts," said Kate Davis an aide to the congresswoman. The administration’s failure to implement the program led the United States Women's Chamber of Commerce to file a lawsuit with SBA in 2005.
 
Reducing the regulatory and tax burdens small businesses face ranks high on the congresswoman’s list of priorities. Regulatory compliance costs for small firms are estimated to be in the area of $600 billion annually with small businesses paying a disproportionately higher rate than large corporations. On Jan. 4, her first day as chairwoman, Rep. Velázquez introduced a bill to simplify tax filing requirements for small businesses which must file separate city, state, and federal tax forms. She is seeking to simplify the process, so business owners would not have to duplicate their filings.

The newly elected 110th Congress, said the chair, will seek and find solutions for exponentially rising health care and energy costs. "Of 48 million uninsured Americans, 60 percent are small business owners, their relatives and their employees. Health insurance premiums have risen by nearly 80% since 2000.  At this rate, they will overtake profits of most small businesses by 2008, forcing owners to drop coverage or to pass on the costs," said the new chair before inviting the audience to come to Washington to testify on health care costs and other issues.

“Small businesses have always been my passion,” the congressmember told her audience. “I was not appointed to this committee, I asked for it,” she said. Her interest in grassroots economic support was sparked when, as a child, she watched her father struggle to maintain his small business after her family moved to America from Puerto Rico.
 
“We’ll get things done. That’s the name of the game,” said Congresswoman Velázquez in closing.