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Chairman Williams Gavels in Committee on Small Business Markup
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the House Committee on Small Business is holding a full committee markup on nine bills.
Chairman Roger Williams’ opening statement as prepared for delivery:
Good morning, and welcome to today’s markup where we’ll be discussing nine bills that address the various needs of our nation’s small businesses. I am going to be speaking on each of the bills as we bring up today in greater detail, so I want to keep my opening statement brief and just highlight a few points.
When I took over as the Chairman of this Committee, I wanted to bring my private sector experience to the forefront. I employ hundreds of people back in Texas at my car dealerships, and almost all of them work on commission. It incentivizes them to work hard and take ownership of what they are selling.
This was the inspiration behind one of the bills we are marking up today, the Put America on Commission Act of 2024. This bill creates a whistleblower program that will align the incentives of the public to help us all achieve the shared goal of holding criminals that took advantage of the government lending programs during the COVID-19 pandemic.
When Congress passed the pandemic assistance programs, there was a need to strike a balance between getting money out quickly and having appropriate fraud mitigation tools in place. There was always the assumption that we would be able to catch the fraudsters on the backend. However, after speaking with the Inspector General, he knew this would lead to a disaster, and the after-action reports show he was correct. There has been an estimated $200 billion dollars in fraud between the pandemic programs, and the OIG has a 100-year backlog in order to get through all of these cases. This is not an issue that can simply be fixed by throwing money at the existing problem: we need something that will speed up this process.
That is where this bill will come into play. By creating this new whistleblower program within the SBA, the inspector general will receive higher quality information that will lead to more, and quicker, convictions.
Whistleblower programs have been proven to be effective in many other agencies, such as the IRS and the SEC. I am confident that this bill would lead to more convictions of COVID fraud when we look to replicate it at the SBA. I will have more to say on this bill when it is brought up later today, but I want to thank the staff on both sides of the aisle for making this bill a reality.
In closing, I’d like to thank our members for bringing all of the bills forward for consideration in today’s markup. Every piece of legislation we’re going to look at today is the product of hearings or our oversight efforts that we have conducted. I am proud to see our committee activity being turned into legislation that will make Main Street stronger.
With that, I look forward to today’s markup, and I yield to the distinguished Ranking Member from New York, Ms. Velasquez.
Chairman Roger Williams’ opening statement as prepared for delivery:
Good morning, and welcome to today’s markup where we’ll be discussing nine bills that address the various needs of our nation’s small businesses. I am going to be speaking on each of the bills as we bring up today in greater detail, so I want to keep my opening statement brief and just highlight a few points.
When I took over as the Chairman of this Committee, I wanted to bring my private sector experience to the forefront. I employ hundreds of people back in Texas at my car dealerships, and almost all of them work on commission. It incentivizes them to work hard and take ownership of what they are selling.
This was the inspiration behind one of the bills we are marking up today, the Put America on Commission Act of 2024. This bill creates a whistleblower program that will align the incentives of the public to help us all achieve the shared goal of holding criminals that took advantage of the government lending programs during the COVID-19 pandemic.
When Congress passed the pandemic assistance programs, there was a need to strike a balance between getting money out quickly and having appropriate fraud mitigation tools in place. There was always the assumption that we would be able to catch the fraudsters on the backend. However, after speaking with the Inspector General, he knew this would lead to a disaster, and the after-action reports show he was correct. There has been an estimated $200 billion dollars in fraud between the pandemic programs, and the OIG has a 100-year backlog in order to get through all of these cases. This is not an issue that can simply be fixed by throwing money at the existing problem: we need something that will speed up this process.
That is where this bill will come into play. By creating this new whistleblower program within the SBA, the inspector general will receive higher quality information that will lead to more, and quicker, convictions.
Whistleblower programs have been proven to be effective in many other agencies, such as the IRS and the SEC. I am confident that this bill would lead to more convictions of COVID fraud when we look to replicate it at the SBA. I will have more to say on this bill when it is brought up later today, but I want to thank the staff on both sides of the aisle for making this bill a reality.
In closing, I’d like to thank our members for bringing all of the bills forward for consideration in today’s markup. Every piece of legislation we’re going to look at today is the product of hearings or our oversight efforts that we have conducted. I am proud to see our committee activity being turned into legislation that will make Main Street stronger.
With that, I look forward to today’s markup, and I yield to the distinguished Ranking Member from New York, Ms. Velasquez.
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