President Obama traveled to Buffalo on Thursday afternoon where he spoke to a room full of small business owners at Industrial Support, Inc., telling them that they are the “backbone of America’s economy.”
Acknowledging the pain that Americans and their families were going through on account of the recession, Obama observed that this notwithstanding, the economy was improving, although there was still a long way to go.
“Despite all the naysayers who were predicting failure a year ago, our economy is growing again” Obama said. “Last month we had the strongest job growth that we’d seen in years. And by the way, almost all of it was in the private sector, and a bunch of it was manufacturing.”
Obama underscored the role of small business in the economy and said that small business owners were the backbone of America’s economy.
“These entrepreneurial pioneers (small business owners), they embody the spirit of possibility — tireless work ethic; simple hope for something better that lies at the heart of the American ideal,” Obama said. “These are the men and women willing to take a chance on their dream. They’ve got good ideas and then they’ve got the drive to follow through. They’ve started mom-and-pop stores and they’ve got garages they open up and they start tinkering and suddenly that leads to some of America’s biggest, most successful businesses.”
Obama reminded his audience that he had called for a $30 billion small business lending fund to help increase the flow of credit to small companies who were having difficulty accessing credit in light of the financial crisis. He said that that legislation was now before Congress and it included a new small business credit initiative for states.
Obama said the had also asked Congress to extend and enhance SBA programs to help small business owners get loans to help create more jobs.
See Full Statement of President Obama Below.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, everybody. Hello, hello, hello! Hey! (Applause.) It’s good to be in Buffalo. Everybody please have a seat, have a seat. Get comfortable.
I’m sorry for the delay. This was a secret — I only told Dave, but then I thought I probably should tell all of you that I had to go out and try those wings before I came out. (Applause.) So if you see some of the sauce, that’s why. And I can vouch for Duff’s crispy medium — that’s what I had. (Applause.) Very nice. Outstanding.
A couple of acknowledgments I want to make. First of all, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown is here. Where is he? Byron, stand up. (Applause.) Congresswoman Louise Slaughter is here. (Applause.) Your own congressman from this district, Brian Higgins is here. (Applause.) Congressman Chris Lee is here. (Applause.) And I brought one of my outstanding members of my Cabinet who is working hard every day with businesses like this to help grow the economy — Karen Mills, my Small Business Administrator is here. Please give her a big round of applause. (Applause.)
So this is my first visit to western New York as President. And so it is just a thrill to be here. I’m glad that it’s not snowing. Thank you. (Laughter.) Last Sunday, right? You guys still got snow? Sheesh. (Laughter.) I thought Chicago was bad. This is worse.
But I’m really thrilled to be here, partly because it gives me a chance to get out of Washington. And I’ve been trying to make a habit of that. About once a week or so I try to take a trip outside of Washington. Now, don’t get me wrong, Washington is a beautiful city. I’ve got a really nice office. (Laughter.) And I live above the store, so the commute is really short. (Laughter.)
But you’ve heard of being in the bubble. When you’re in Washington, sometimes it’s just hard to hear anything else except the clamor of politics. And that clamor can drown out the voices of the American people. So I’m not going to give a long speech today. I actually want to take some time to take a few questions from you, hear about your concerns, your hopes, what opportunities you see out there.
But before I do, I do want to say a few words about the thing that I know is in the front and center of everybody’s mind, and that’s the state of our economy.
Now, I don’t need to tell all of you that we’re still emerging from one of the worst recessions in our history. And it’s been tough everywhere, but cities like Buffalo have been especially hard hit. Even before the most recent downturn began -– years before –- you were seeing jobs disappear and factories shut their doors. Costs, family expenses went up, but wages — they flatlined, they didn’t go up. And that’s tough on families, and that’s devastating on communities.
So breaking our economic freefall was job number one when I took office. I want everybody to remember, because sometimes we’ve got a selective memory here — when I took office, we were losing 750,000 jobs a month. Our economy had shrunk the quarter I came in 6 percent. Experts of all political stripes were warning of another Great Depression. That wasn’t that long ago, but it’s easy to forget just how fragile things are and how scared people were. And so we had to take immediate steps to stop the crisis. And some of those steps weren’t particularly popular.
I had just inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit from the previous administration, so the last thing I wanted to do was to spend money on a recovery package, or help the American auto industry keep its doors open, or prevent the collapse of Wall Street banks whose irresponsibility had helped cause this crisis. But what I knew was if I didn’t act boldly and I didn’t act quickly, if we didn’t defy the politics of the moment and do what was necessary, we could have risked an even greater disaster.
And the other thing we weren’t going to do is give in to the partisan posturing in Washington -– because half the time up there all everyone is worried about is, what does the poll say, and making calculations based on what’s good for the next election instead of what is good for the next generation.
And, frankly, I had one side of the aisle just sit on the sidelines as the crisis unfolded. And if we had taken that position, just thinking about what was good for my politics, millions more Americans would have lost their jobs and their businesses and their homes.
But, Buffalo, I did not run for President to preside over America’s decline. I didn’t run for President to watch the erosion of the middle class continue. I ran for President to keep the American Dream alive in our time, for our kids, and our grandkids, the next generation.
So we met our responsibilities — we did what the moment required. And I won’t stand here and pretend that we’ve climbed all the way out of the hole. There are too many folks right here in Buffalo and all across the country who are still hurting.
I read too many letters each night from folks who are still hurting, they’re still out of work, so I know things are still tough out there for a lot of folks. And, you know, economists have all kinds of fancy formulas and mathematical equations to measure the exact moment that the recession ended. And it’s great that the stock market has bounced back, but if you’re still looking for a job out there, it’s still a recession. If you can’t pay your bills or your mortgage, it’s still a recession. No matter what the economists say, it’s not a real recovery until people feel it in their own lives, until Americans who want work can find it, and until families can afford to pay their bills and send their kids to college.
So that’s what we’re working for. That’s our goal. But I want to just say to Buffalo — I want to say to all of you and I want to say to America, we can say beyond a shadow of a doubt, today we are headed in the right direction. We are headed in the right direction. (Applause.)
All those tough steps we took, they’re working. Despite all the naysayers who were predicting failure a year ago, our economy is growing again. Last month we had the strongest job growth that we’d seen in years. And by the way, almost all of it was in the private sector, and a bunch of it was manufacturing. So this month was better than last month. Next month is going to be stronger than this month. And next year is going to be better than this year. Last month we gained 290,000 jobs — that was the largest increase in four years. We’ve now gained jobs four months in a row right here in the United States. (Applause.) Last month brought the largest increase in manufacturing employment since 1998 — the strongest growth in manufacturing in 12 years — and that’s a good sign for companies like this one.
I was talking to Dave. Dave was telling me about the rebound in orders that we’ve seen here, right here at this company. The question is now, how do we keep that momentum going? How do we keep adding more and more jobs?
And we know that government has to play a role in meeting this goal, but we also know that role is limited. Government is not the true engine of job creation and economic growth in this country; businesses are, especially small businesses like this one.
So America’s small business owners — people like Dave Sullivan — have always been the backbone of America’s economy. These entrepreneurial pioneers, they embody the spirit of possibility — tireless work ethic; simple hope for something better that lies at the heart of the American ideal. These are the men and women willing to take a chance on their dream. They’ve got good ideas and then they’ve got the drive to follow through. They’ve started mom-and-pop stores and they’ve got garages they open up and they start tinkering and suddenly that leads to some of America’s biggest, most successful businesses. Ordinary Americans with a dream to start their own business, they create most of the jobs that keep our workers employed. In fact, over the past decade and a half, America’s small businesses have created 65 percent of all new jobs in this country.
Now, the problem is, is that our small businesses have also been some of the hardest hit by this recession. From the middle of 2007 through the end of 2008, small businesses lost 2.4 million jobs. And because banks shrunk from lending in the midst of the financial crisis, it’s been difficult for entrepreneurs to take out the loans that they need to start a business. And for those who do own a small business, it’s difficult to finance inventories and make payroll, or expand if things are going well.
So government can’t create jobs, but it can create the conditions for small businesses to grow and thrive and hire more workers. Government can’t guarantee a company’s success, but it can knock down the barriers that prevent small business owners from getting loans or investing in the future. And that’s exactly what we’ve been doing.
When Dave wanted to expand this company last year, he received a loan from the Small Business Administration that was part of the Recovery Act, part of the stimulus. It’s a loan that allowed him to pay the bills and purchase new equipment. Last fall he was even able to increase his workforce. And today, he feels optimistic that he’ll be able to hire more workers in the near future.
Bill Puglisi and his brother Rick are also here with us today. Where are Bill and Rick? Where are they? There they are right there. All right. They run — (applause) — good to see you guys. They run a small business called Imperial Textile. And thanks to the SBA loan that they received, they didn’t have to lay any workers off last year. In fact, they were able — they were even able to purchase a new building. Is that right? So today they’re starting to look to hire again. You guys can sit down. (Laughter.)
All across America, we’ve taken steps like these to help companies grow and add jobs. Last year we enacted seven tax cuts for America’s small businesses, as well as what we call the Making Work Pay tax credit that goes to the vast majority of small business owners. So, so far, the Recovery Act has supported over 63,000 loans to small businesses -– that’s more than $26 billion in new lending. More than 1,200 banks and credit unions that had stopped issuing SBA loans when the financial crisis hit are lending again today. More than $7.5 billion in federal Recovery Act contracts are now going to small businesses.
Right now, a series of additional tax incentives and other steps to promote hiring are going to take effect. Because of a bill that I signed into law a few weeks ago, businesses are now eligible for tax cuts for hiring unemployed workers. Companies are able to write off more of their investments in new equipment. And as part of health care reform, 4 million small businesses recently received a postcard in their mailbox telling them that they could be eligible for a health care tax cut this year. That’s worth maybe tens of thousands of dollars for some companies. And it’s going to provide welcome relief to small business owners, who too often have to choose between health care and hiring.
When we stopped over at Duff’s to get our wings, one of the customers there was a woman who was a small business owner. She had a courier service. And I asked her, “What’s the biggest challenge you’ve got?” She said, “Trying to keep up health care for me and my workers.” And she was appreciative that she’s going to get a 35 percent tax break on her health care costs this year. (Applause.) And I told her that — and over the next several years we’re setting an exchange where she, as a small business owner, is going to be able to buy into a big pool that all these members of Congress are a part of, so with millions of members, that’s going to give her more leverage with the insurance companies; that’s going to drive down her costs. She offered me to have some of her wings as a consequence. (Laughter.) Said I had already put in an order.
So all these steps have helped. They’re going to help. But I believe we’ve got to do even more to give our small businesses a boost. And maybe the single most important thing we can do right now is to help ensure that creditworthy small business owners can get the capital that they need.
So in my State of the Union address, I called for a $30 billion small business lending fund that would help increase the flow of credit to small companies that were hit hard by the decline in lending that followed the financial crisis. And last week, I sent Congress this legislation, which now includes a new state small business credit initiative -– an initiative that will help expand lending for small businesses and manufacturers at a time when budget shortfalls are leading a lot of states to cut back on vitally important lending programs. And I’ve also asked Congress to work with us to extend and enhance SBA programs that have helped small business owners get loans so they can create more jobs.
That’s our small business agenda. That’s our jobs agenda — empowering small businesses so they can hire. I hear a lot of noise from some of our friends out there that say, this is nothing more than “big government.” I want everybody here to understand, I don’t — I personally don’t think that giving tax cuts to businesses is big government. I don’t understand how helping businesses get loans so they can grow and hire more workers is big government.
I’m not interested in another debate about big government versus small government. I care about whether government is meeting its responsibilities to the people it represents. And I want to unleash the great power of our economy, so Americans who are looking for work can find it. And I’m hopeful that our small business agenda doesn’t fall victim to the same partisanship that we’ve seen over the last year. Helping businesses to create jobs should be something that both parties can agree to.
Now, since this company was founded more than a decade ago, you’ve done all that’s asked of Americans who hope to pursue the dream of owning their own business. I mean, you can just tell Dave’s just got a lot of energy. You can tell the guy loves his business, he loves his employees. And what he did was he took a risk on a good idea, and then he worked hard for that success.
He’s met his responsibilities to his employees and to his customers. Millions of small business owners and workers across the country have made those same responsibilities. And now it’s time that the responsibility — that same responsibility, that same success, is rewarded with the opportunity to keep growing, keep hiring, keep contributing to the success of your communities and your country. That’s the opportunity that we’re providing today. That’s the opportunity I will continue to fight for as your President in the weeks and the months ahead.
I want everybody here to know, in Buffalo and all across the country, we are on a course that is working. This company makes me want to double down and work even harder, because I’m absolutely confident that if we continue to take responsibility to invest in our future that our brightest days are still ahead of us.
Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you. Thank you. So — thank you. (Applause.)
