Friday, March 13, 2009

News from Ranking Member Sam Graves and Committee Republicans:
• Congressman Buchanan “blasts FDA for tomato recall” at Subcommittee on Regulations and Healthcare Hearing entitled, “Impact of Food Recalls on Small Businesses.”
• Congressman Buchanan visits a local business in Sarasota, FL to address proposed tax increases. 
• Associated Press: Salmonella recall could cost peanut producers $1B
• Congress looks at how salmonella scare impacted farmers, small business. 

Must-Reads from the Week:
• Politico: Small manufacturers cry uncle

Administration and the SBA:
• U.S. Treasury Secretary Geithner announced this week that they will be releasing a plan aimed at helping small business obtain capital.  Details on the plan have yet to be released, but according to news reports it will include efforts to get secondary markets moving again to free up capital, increase government backing of Small Business Administration loans, and expedite SBA loan approvals.  Secretary Geithner said that details could be released as early as next week.

Legislation and Letters Circulating Around the House:

(If you would like to publicize your Small Business effort in Congress, please email Paul J. Sass at Paul.Sass@mail.house.gov)

• Rep. Graves Seeks Cosponsor for H. Res 232, Commending the Toys for Tots Fight Against Illiteracy.  For over 60 years Toys for Tots has collected toy donations for underprivileged children. Beginning in March 2008, Toys for Tots expanded beyond toy donations to taking on the challenge of rising illiteracy rates.  With the help of The UPS Store and Mail Boxes Etc., the Toys for Tots Literacy Program was formed to help economically disadvantaged children to compete and succeed in academics by providing them direct access to resources that enhances their ability to read and to communicate effectively.  H.Res. 232 recognizes and commends the Toys for Tots Literacy Program’s efforts and accomplishments.  If you wish to become a co-sponsor of this legislation, please contact Paul Sass 5-7041 or Paul.sass@mail.house.gov. 

• House Recycling Caucus Recruiting Members.  The House Recycling Caucus is a growing bipartisan group of members that serve to educate House members and their staff about the recycling industry and to provide a forum for discussing ways to increase recycling rates across the country.  The scrap recycling industry alone employs more than 85,000 people in nearly every Congressional district in the United States.  Each year, scrap processing keeps over 160 million tons of material out of landfills.  Recycled aluminum saves the nation 95 percent of the energy that would have been needed to make new aluminum from ore.  Producing recycled paper requires less energy than producing paper from trees and prevents paper from degrading in landfills, where it produces methane, a greenhouse gas.  Recycling results in a net reduction in ten major categories of air pollutants and eight major categories of water pollutants.  A national recycling rate of 30% reduces greenhouse gas emissions as much as removing nearly 25 million cars from the road.  For more information regarding the House Recycling Caucus, please contact Tim Del Monico with Rep. Pallone (5-4671) or Grant Culp with Rep. Shimkus (5-5271).

Review of House Floor Activity:
• This week in the House of Representatives only one rule bill was considered, H.R. 1262, the Water Quality Investment Act.  This legislation passed in the House by a vote of 317-100.  The legislation is a combination of 5 bills that passed the House last Congress and its main purpose is to reauthorize the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (SRF) at $13.8 billion dollars over 5 years.  The SRF provides low interest loans that are used for wastewater treatment plants and various wastewater infrastructure improvement projects.  According to the Republican Study Committee, the legislation extends Davis-Bacon prevailing wage requirements to the Clean Water State Revolving Fund.  Davis-Bacon increases the cost of projects to taxpayers by up to 15% on average, and favors large, unionized businesses over smaller companies because of the paperwork required to comply with the law.    

• This week Rep. George Miller introduced H.R. 1409, the misnamed “Employee Free Choice Act,” or better known as “card check.”  The legislation would allow labor unions to be created after a simple majority of workers have publicly signed authorization cards, and possibly without business owners having been notified.   Without the secret ballot, workers could face coercion to vote in a particular way.  For small businesses “card check” threatens their ability to create jobs.  Further, the “card check” legislation would allow government bureaucrats to set working conditions and kill the entrepreneurial spirit.

Review of Senate Floor Activity:
• The Senate this week finally passed the FY09 Omnibus appropriations bill, totaling about $410 billion in spending.  The Senate Minority was successful in beating back all amendments, including efforts to freeze spending.  On February 11 President Obama signed the bill into law.  This happen just before the current continuing resolution was set to expire.  The passage of this legislation will fund the federal government for the remainder of the fiscal year and allow Congress to begin the FY10 appropriations process.  This large spending measure included over 9,000 earmarks.

Small Business Committee hearing summary this week:
• On March 11, 2009, The House Committee on Small Business, Subcommittee on Regulations and Healthcare held a hearing titled, “The Impact of Food Recalls on Small Business.”  Read the hearing release here.

The witnesses at the hearing were: Dr. Ken Peterson, Assistant Administrator for the Office of Field Operations, Food Safety Inspection Service, United States Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC; Dr. Steven M. Solomon, Assistant Commissioner for Compliance Policy, Office of Regulatory Affairs, Food and Drug Administration, Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, DC; Mr. Don Koehler, Executive Director, Georgia Peanut Commission, Tifton, GA; Mr. Michael Ambrosio, Vice President for Quality Assurance, Wakefern Food Corp., Keasbey, NJ, for the Food Marketing Institute; Mr. Marshall "Ken" Conrad, President, Libby Hill Seafood Restaurants, Inc., Greensboro, NC, for the National Restaurant Association; Ms. Diane Austin, Vice President for Marketing , Perry's Ice Cream, Akron, NY, for the International Dairy Foods Association; and Ms. Sheryl Vanco, Bear Lake, PA, for the National Farmers Union. 

Drs. Peterson and Solomon explained how the Food and Drug Administration and the Food Safety Inspection Service protect the food supply.  Both testified that as the result of recent outbreaks of food borne illness, both agencies are taking additional steps to improve the safety of America's food supply.  The two government officials suggested that mandatory recall authority might prove helpful to their agencies' efforts.

The private sector witnesses explained how their operations maintain the quality and safety of the food supply.  They also noted that food recalls require them to incur substantial additional costs in finding and disposing contaminated food.  All the private sector witnesses confirmed that the real path to food safety was not regulatory but a culture of food safety quality within every business that manufactures, distributes and retails food and food products. 

The Chair and the Ranking Member will continue to monitor agency efforts to protect the food supply while ensuring that small businesses do not suffer disproportionately as a result of food recalls.

• On March 11, 2009, The House Small Business Committee held a markup hearing to discuss the Committee’s views and estimates of the President’s proposed Small Business Administration (SBA) budget for FY 2010.  Read Ranking Member Graves’ full remarks here.

• On March 12, 2009 The House Committee on Small Business, Subcommittee on Contracting and Technology held a hearing titled, “Ensuring Stimulus Contracts for Small and Veteran-Owned Businesses.”  Read the hearing release here.

The witnesses were: Mr. Calvin Jenkins, Acting Associate Administrator, Government Contracting and Business Development, United States Small Business Administration, Washington, DC; Mr. Joel Szabat, Acting Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy, United States Department of Transportation, Washington, DC; Ms. Gail Wegner, Acting Director, Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization, Department of Veterans Affairs, Washington, DC; Ms. Brenda DeGraffenreid, Supervisory Acquisition Manager, Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization, Washington, DC; Ms. Linda Oliver, Acting Director, Office of Small Business Programs, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, & Logistics, United States Department of Defense, Pentagon, Arlington, VA; Mr. Mark Klett, President and CEO, Klett Consulting Group, Inc., Virginia Beach, VA; Mr. Jim Hart, President and CEO, ARRIBA Corp., Norfolk, VA; Mr. Jim Schmidt, President, Hohulin Fence Co., Goodfield, IL; Ms. Janice Cavolt, President, JBC Corporation, Virginia Beach, VA; Mr. Justin Brown, Legislative Associate, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Washington, DC; Mr. Joseph Sharpe, Deputy Director, Economic Commission, The American Legion, Washington, DC. 

The government witnesses explained their policies for contracting with small businesses in general and the outreach efforts they are making to veteran-owned small businesses, including those of service-disabled veterans.  Each witness explained the peculiarity of their agency's contracting regime and how each agency can expand contracting to service disabled veteran-owned small businesses, particularly in light of the increased contracting opportunities available in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The private sector witnesses on the second panel all criticized the failure of the government to provide greater contracting opportunities for veteran and service-disabled veteran owned small businesses.  The witnesses suggested that greater opportunities for veteran small businesses will result in more rapid dissemination of stimulus dollars to American workers. 
 
The Chairman and Ranking Member will continue to monitor agency efforts to award 3.5 percent of the prime contracting dollars to service-disabled veterans. 

    
Other Small Business off the Hill:
• Heritage Foundation: EFCA Authorizes Government Control of 4 Million Small Businesses
• NFIB Small Business Optimism Index: February survey of small business owners’ plans and opinions.

Looking Forward:
House Small Business Committee Hearings next week:
• Full Committee Hearing, March 18, 2009, 1:00PM entitled, “The President’s FY 2010 Budget and Medicare: How Will Small Providers be Impacted?,” 2360 Rayburn House Office Building