(R-Maine)
This week, the Senate debated Defense authorization legislation that is critical to the protection and safety of our nation. As Chair and Ranking Member of the Senate Small Business Committee, Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) and I offered two vital amendments designed to assist veteran entrepreneurs and enable Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) firms to commercialize their products. I was pleased that the Senate unanimously accepted these amendments to the Defense Authorization bill. Based on key legislation I introduced with Sen. Kerry earlier this summer, the first amendment would improve the programs and resources available to our nation’s veteran entrepreneurs and to the small businesses that employ them. The amendment would make vast improvements to the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Military Reservist Economic Disaster Loan (MREIDL) program, which provides funds to businesses to meet ordinary and necessary business expenses that they could have made, if not for the deployment of a reservist who is one of their essential employees. For example, the legislation increases, from $1.5 million to $2 million, the maximum MREIDL loan a business can take. Our changes to the MREIDL program would also allow the SBA Administrator to defer the payment of principal and interest while the employee is deployed.
In addition, the amendment includes a national reservist enterprise transition and sustainability provision. This provision would allow the SBA to award grants to entities that assist businesses with preparing and implementing a business strategy to cover the period of time that the owner is called-up on active duty through six months after that owner’s date of return. Our amendment would also create a new Interagency Task Force to coordinate the efforts of Federal agencies necessary to increase capital and business development opportunities for, and increase the award of Federal contracting opportunities to, small businesses owned and controlled by veterans.
This amendment is critical given that our nation’s Guard and Reserve forces have selflessly answered the call to duty in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, there have been nearly 3,000 Guard and Reserve deployments from Maine to those two countries since September 11, 2001.
I believe that while Reservists continue to answer our nation’s call to duty, we must similarly fulfill our responsibility to help protect their livelihoods back home. I am pleased that this legislation takes a significant step toward achieving that goal.
Finally, the Senate approved a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Commercialization Pilot Program amendment I filed with Senator Kerry to assist SBIR firms to commercialize their products and, thereby, transition from federal funding to the open market. More specifically, the amendment would encourage Phase III awards by the Department of Defense’s major contracting agencies that participate in the SBIR program. The amendment also includes authorization of incentives to prime contractors for using SBIR technologies.
The SBIR program has been tremendously successful in helping to develop the products of the future. This common-sense amendment would not only establish a pilot program that would help SBIR firms to bring their products to the marketplace, but it would also encourage prime contractors to use those products.
I am so pleased that the Senate approved these critical amendments last week to assist veteran entrepreneurs and the small businesses that employ them, as well as companies that help supply our defense needs. Both pieces of legislation are long overdue, and I hope they will be passed by Congress and signed into law in the near future – for our veterans and their livelihoods at home depend on it.
