The Role of Community Navigators in Reaching Underserved Businesses (House Small Business subcommittee hearing, March 18, 2021)
Summary
Printed record of a hearing of the House Committee on Small Business, Subcommittee on Underserved, Agricultural, and Rural Business Development, held March 18, 2021, titled The Role of Community Navigators in Reaching Underserved Businesses, Small Business Committee Document Number 117–006. Opening statements came from Hon. Jared Golden and Hon. Jim Hagedorn. Witnesses were Rebecca Shi, executive director of the American Business Immigration Coalition; Bridget Weston, chief executive officer of the Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE); Pilar Guzman Zavala, chief executive officer of Half Moon Empanadas; and Bruce Strong, state director of the Minnesota Small Business Development Center. The appendix prints their statements, answers to questions from Golden, and additional material from America's SBDC Missouri.
Summary drafted by a model from the document's text below and checked by script against that text before publication. It is a navigation aid, not a reading of what the document proves. Where AI is used
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“The Role of Community Navigators in Reaching Underserved Businesses (House Small Business subcommittee hearing, March 18, 2021).”
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THE ROLE OF COMMUNITY NAVIGATORS IN
REACHING UNDERSERVED BUSINESSES
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON UNDERSERVED,
AGRICULTURAL,
AND RURAL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS
UNITED STATES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
HEARING HELD
MARCH 18, 2021
Small Business Committee Document Number 117–006
Available via the GPO Website: www.govinfo.gov
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
43–802 WASHINGTON : 2021
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HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS
NYDIA VELÁZQUEZ, New York, Chairwoman
JARED GOLDEN, Maine
JASON CROW, Colorado
SHARICE DAVIDS, Kansas
KWEISI MFUME, Maryland
DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota
MARIE NEWMAN, Illinois
CAROLYN BOURDEAUX, Georgia
JUDY CHU, California
DWIGHT EVANS, Pennsylvania
ANTONIO DELGADO, New York
CHRISSY HOULAHAN, Pennsylvania
ANDY KIM, New Jersey
ANGIE CRAIG, Minnesota
BLAINE LUETKEMEYER, Missouri, Ranking Member
ROGER WILLIAMS, Texas
JIM HAGEDORN, Minnesota
PETE STAUBER, Minnesota
DAN MEUSER, Pennsylvania
CLAUDIA TENNEY, New York
ANDREW GARBARINO, New York
YOUNG KIM, California
BETH VAN DUYNE, Texas
BYRON DONALDS, Florida
MARIA SALAZAR, Florida
SCOTT FITZGERALD, Wisconsin
MELISSA JUNG, Majority Staff Director
ELLEN HARRINGTON, Majority Deputy Staff Director
DAVID PLANNING, Staff Director
(II)
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CONTENTS
OPENING STATEMENTS
Page
Hon. Jared Golden ................................................................................................... 1
Hon. Jim Hagedorn ................................................................................................. 3
WITNESSES
Ms. Rebecca Shi, Executive Director, American Business Immigration Coali-
tion, Chicago, IL ................................................................................................... 6
Ms. Bridget Weston, Chief Executive Officer, Service Corps of Retired Execu-
tives (SCORE), Herndon, VA .............................................................................. 7
Ms. Pilar Guzman Zavala, Chief Executive Officer, Half Moon Empanadas,
Miami, FL ............................................................................................................. 9
Mr. Bruce Strong, State Director, Minnesota Small Business Development
Center (SBDC), St. Paul, MN ............................................................................. 11
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Ms. Rebecca Shi, Executive Director, American Business Immigration
Coalition, Chicago, IL ................................................................................... 29
Ms. Bridget Weston, Chief Executive Officer, Service Corps of Retired
Executives (SCORE), Herndon, VA ............................................................. 34
Ms. Pilar Guzman Zavala, Chief Executive Officer, Half Moon
Empanadas, Miami, FL ................................................................................ 45
Mr. Bruce Strong, State Director, Minnesota Small Business Develop-
ment Center (SBDC), St. Paul, MN ............................................................ 47
Questions and Answers for the Record:
Questions from Hon. Jared Golden to Ms. Bridget Weston and Answers
from Ms. Bridget Weston ............................................................................. 50
Questions from Hon. Jared Golden to Ms. Rebecca Shi and Answers
from Ms. Rebecca Shi ................................................................................... 52
Questions from Hon. Jared Golden to Mr. Bruce Strong and Answers
from Mr. Bruce Strong ................................................................................. 58
Additional Material for the Record:
America’s SBDC Missouri ................................................................................ 59
(III)
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THE ROLE OF COMMUNITY NAVIGATORS IN
REACHING UNDERSERVED BUSINESSES
THURSDAY, MARCH 18, 2021
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS,
SUBCOMMITTEE ON UNDERSERVED, AGRICULTURAL,
AND RURAL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in Room
2360, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Jared Golden [chair-
man of the Subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Golden, Crow, Delgado, Hagedorn, Wil-
liams, Stauber, Tenney, and Salazar.
Also Present: Representative Luetkemeyer.
Chairman GOLDEN. I call this hearing to order.
I want to make sure to note a couple of important requirements
before we get going. Let me first say that standing House and com-
mittee rules and practice continue to apply during hybrid pro-
ceedings. All Members are reminded that they are expected to ad-
here to these standing rules, including decorum.
House regulations require Members to be visible through a video
connection throughout the proceedings, so please keep your cam-
eras on. Also please remember to remain muted until recognized to
minimize background noise. If you have to participate in another
proceeding, please exit this one and log back in later. In the event
a Member encounters technical issues that prevent them from
being recognized for questions I will move to the next available
Member of the same party and recognize that Member at the next
appropriate time slot provided they have returned to the pro-
ceeding.
For those Members physically present in the Committee room
today, we will also be following health and safety guidelines issued
by the House attending physician. That includes social distancing
and the use of masks. Members and staff are expected to wear
masks at all times while in the hearing room. And I thank you in
advance for your commitment to a safe environment for all here
today.
I am proud to serve as Chair of this Subcommittee.
Underserved, agricultural, and rural small businesses have expe-
rienced some of the harshest outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The road to recovery they face is long and we should ensure to ad-
vance policies that will prioritize them so that they are not left be-
hind. I hope to use this Subcommittee’s first hearing during the
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117th Congress to examine the newly created Community Navi-
gator Program.
Throughout the COVID crisis large numbers of minority-owned
and rural small businesses found themselves on the outside looking
in when trying to access emergency relief. During the early days
of the Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster
Loan Advances, large financial institutions often prioritized larger
customers at the expense of underserved rural small businesses.
This lack of access to relief added insult to injury for small busi-
nesses bearing the brunt of the pandemic’s economic impact.
When COVID struck, many small businesses in rural areas were
still financially and structurally rebounding from the Great Reces-
sion. During 2020 slow rural population growth and declining labor
force participation led to a much slower employment rate in rural
areas than elsewhere. Rural businesses also face a lack of access
to capital in general, as well as broadband connectivity, making
pivoting to digital offerings and adapting to the COVID business
environment much more difficult.
Minority-owned businesses have also been devastated by this cri-
sis. Last year the number of actively working self-employed busi-
ness owners fell dramatically across the black, Hispanic, and Asian
American communities. And minority-owned firms that had been
fortunate enough to avoid closure faced harsher financial conditions
and have less cash on hand than white firms do.
These are the realities that led to the creation of the Community
Navigator Program. Congress authorized the program as part of
the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. It will provide $100 million
for grants to organizations to participate in the program and $75
million to support outreach and education. The funding for edu-
cation and outreach will go towards offering services in the 10 most
common languages other than English, making improvements to
the SBA’s website, implementing immediate campaign to educate
underserved communities, and establishing an SBA call center.
The Community Navigator Program will supply grants to tradi-
tional business assistance organizations, like small business devel-
opment centers, women’s business centers, and its core chapters.
These institutions have deep ties to the communities they operate
in and will engage trusted, culturally knowledgeable partners to
conduct targeted outreach to specific sectors of the small business
community.
This outreach can manifest in various ways, including hiring
dedicated staff to focus on these individual communities, or
partnering with specialized community organizations and chambers
of commerce via a hub and spoke model. The Community Navigator
Program seeks to engage with underserved communities by pro-
viding technical assistance and enhanced outreach.
For this program to meet its stated goal Congress must closely
monitor its roll out and work with the Administration to make the
program operate as effectively as possible. That is why this hearing
today is important.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about the potential
impact of the program on underserved and rural small businesses
and ways the Subcommittee can ensure as many small businesses
benefit as possible.
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With that, I will now yield to the Ranking Member, Mr.
Hagedorn, for his opening statement.
Mr. HAGEDORN. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and congratu-
lations on your appointment as Chair of this Subcommittee. And on
behalf of the Republican Members and myself we look forward to
working with you during this Congress to especially help our small
businesses and those in the rural communities and the agricultural
sector.
Chairman GOLDEN. I very much look forward to working with
you too and I am blessed to be two Congresses in a row working
on a Subcommittee with a Member from Minnesota. And you got
the other one sitting right in front of you.
Mr. HAGEDORN. And I know Congressman Stauber had a good
working relationship with you as well.
So small businesses from all sectors of the economy have turned
to the U.S. Small Business Administration programs for relief dur-
ing the COVID-19 pandemic. Following the launch of the Paycheck
Protection Program created by Congress in March of last year, the
SBA processed more than 14 years-worth of loans in less than 14
days, serving or assisting over 50 million small business jobs dur-
ing the program’s first run. That is just unbelievable when you
think about it, the amount of work and loans that were run
through in such a short period of time.
The success of recovery programs like PPP is undeniable. How-
ever, there is no doubt that inconsistent guidance, burdensome pa-
perwork, and administrative holes and delays have caused confu-
sion for small businesses looking to utilize these programs. As
Democrats continue to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic as an ex-
cuse to ram through their massive spending package and create
new government programs, I believe Congress should focus on tar-
geted and efficient relief that will aid small businesses as we re-
open the economy.
The partisan $1.9 trillion so called American Rescue Plan Act of
2021 directed the SBA to establish a Community Navigator Pilot
Program. This program will issue grants or contracts with non-
profits, resource partners, states, and localities, providing free as-
sistance and resources to small businesses for programs made
available during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is my hope that any
new program created by Congress will aid existing SBA resource
partners in their outreach to all communities and not duplicate
current efforts.
Southern Minnesota is home to a diverse group of small busi-
nesses. In my district it is important that rural communities have
the resources needed to contribute to the food supply, fuel rural
America, and support other local businesses.
As we move past the pandemic it is critical that we ensure farm-
ers and ranchers have access to the resources needed to maintain
operations. To support rural communities and agricultural small
businesses, I have introduced H.R. 1411, the Bipartisan PPP Flexi-
bility for Farmers and Ranchers Act, which would allow farmers
and ranchers categorized as partnerships to utilize gross income
when calculating PPP loans. I hope the Members will support me
on that bill. I think it can really help over 100,000 farm partner-
ships as we move forward.
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Today’s hearing will explore the role of community navigators in
researching underserved communities. I look forward to hearing
from our witnesses on the outreach completed by existing SBA re-
source partners, like small business development centers, during
the pandemic and how they have reached underserved areas, in-
cluding remote and rural communities. I look forward to discussing
the Community Navigator pilot program’s objectives and
deliverables in addition to the standards which the navigators will
need to uphold.
Congress has appropriated $175 million for this program and we
must ensure that we be proper stewards of the taxpayers’ dollars
and that the Navigator program yields beneficial results for small
businesses.
With the economy in recovery and egregious and arbitrary lock
downs finally coming to an end, new and existing federal COVID
tools, such as the Community Navigator pilot program, need to be
closely examined to determine the most effective, economical, and
efficient next steps.
Thank you for being here today to discuss this important topic.
I yield back.
Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you, Mr. Hagedorn.
Very quickly I will explain how this hearing will proceed. Each
witness will have 5 minutes to provide a statement and each Com-
mittee Member will have 5 minutes for questions. Please ensure
your microphone is on when you begin speaking and that you re-
turn to mute when finished.
With that, let us introduce our witnesses.
Our first witness today is Ms. Rebecca Shi, executive director of
the American Business Immigration Coalition. As executive direc-
tor of ABIC Ms. Shi works directly with a steering committee of
over 350 CEOs, university presidents, chambers of commerce, and
immigrant advocates to support the passage of pro immigrant pol-
icy at the state and federal levels.
Welcome, Ms. Shi.
Our second witness—one moment. Just for one second. Our sec-
ond witness is Ms. Bridget Weston. Ms. Weston is the CEO of
SCORE. As CEO Ms. Weston provides executive leadership and
works directly and collaboratively with the board of directors to es-
tablish the vision and direction of SCORE.
In her 10 years with the organization she has developed an in
depth understanding of the needs and challenges facing SCORE’s
staff, its 300 chapters, and over 10,000 volunteers.
Welcome back, Ms. Weston.
I would now like to yield to Ms. Salazar to introduce our third
witness.
Ms. SALAZAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity.
And I would like to introduce my constituent, Ms. Pilar Guzman
Zavala. Ms. Zavala is a small business owner in the City of Miami
that I represent and the CEO of Half Moon Empanadas, an Argen-
tinian style restaurant based in my district. She is also a mentor
for women entrepreneurs in the City of Miami with the WIN Lab
Miami from Babson College and the Florida International Univer-
sity StartUP program.
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She is a Ricardo Salinas Scholarship recipient for the Aspen In-
stitute and a Young American Leaders Program Fellow from the
Harvard School of Business.
Additionally, Ms. Zavala is a Venture Cafe board Member and a
Miami leadership and a Miami fellow graduate.
Small businesses are the foundation of our community. And dur-
ing these difficult times our local job creators have been absolutely
devastated. I am committed to restoring our economy and deliv-
ering much needed COVID relief for our struggling small business
owners in South Florida.
Ms. Zavala’s story is truly one of the American dream, just like
mine. But her story is also one of the trials and tribulations. And
we look forward to hearing from your experiences, Ms. Zavala.
Thank you so much for joining us today and to all of you for
doing everything you are doing for our community. Your deter-
mination over the last year is an example to all of us small busi-
ness owners. And I specifically and my staff are looking forward to
visiting Half Moon Empanadas on our next trip to Miami.
Thank you, Ms. Zavala. I yield back.
Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you, Congresswoman Salazar.
With snow still on the ground in Maine and I am guessing in
Minnesota too, the background in Florida there looks pretty warm
and looks nice.
But thank you for the introduction and welcome to Ms. Zavala.
And I would now like to yield to the Ranking Member, Mr.
Hagedorn, to introduce our final witness.
Mr. HAGEDORN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Our next witness is Bruce Strong, who I believe you have met
in the past and have worked with. And you were highly com-
plementary of his previous testimony. I am looking forward to
today.
Mr. Strong is the State Director for the Minnesota Small Busi-
ness Development Center Network. He has extensive experience in
community and economic development and in the mortgage lending
and banking industries. Mr. Strong is an Air Force veteran and
graduated summa cum laude from National College with a degree
in business administration and marketing.
Yesterday, on March 17, the nation celebrated Small Business
Development Centers Day. Small business development centers
provide valuable resources to our small business constituents
across the country. And I thank Mr. Strong and his SBDC col-
leagues for their critical work to promote entrepreneurship, small
business growth, and the U.S. economy.
Mr. Strong, thank you for joining us today and thank you for
your service to our great country.
Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you, Mr. Hagedorn.
Thank you all for joining us today. And why don’t we begin with
opening statements from our witnesses. First I will recognize Ms.
Shi for 5 minutes.
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STATEMENTS OF REBECCA SHI, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, AMER-
ICAN BUSINESS IMMIGRATION COALITION; BRIDGET WES-
TON, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, SERVICE CORPS OF RE-
TIRED EXECUTIVES (SCORE); PILAR GUZMAN ZAVALA, CHIEF
EXECUTIVE OFFICER, HALF MOON EMPANADAS; BRUCE
STRONG, STATE DIRECTOR, MINNESOTA SMALL BUSINESS
DEVELOPMENT CENTER (SBDC)
STATEMENT OF REBECCA SHI
Ms. SHI. Good morning, Chairman Golden, Ranking Member
Hagedorn. My name is Rebecca Shi and I am the executive director
of the American Business Immigration Coalition.
ABIC believes that the economy recovery of our nation’s small
and underserved businesses is necessary to ensure our nation’s re-
covery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Small business owners, espe-
cially African American, immigrant, rural, and other underserved
and isolated businesses are the engines of their local economies.
ABIC is a bipartisan coalition of 1,200 employers, CEOs, and
business associations across 13 states, including Florida, Texas,
Maine, Colorado, New York, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Illinois, Mas-
sachusetts, Wisconsin, North and South Carolina. Over the last 11
months ABIC created and implemented a small business recovery
technical assistance program, leveraging a community navigator
model. This program provides one-to-one technical assistance for
small, underserved minority-owned businesses and growers to ac-
cess critical resources, including but not limited to the Paycheck
Protection program, federal and state small business loans and
grants.
ABIC thanks Congress and President Biden for including $100
million for community navigators in the American Recovery. We
also thank Chairman Ben Cardin, Senators Marco Rubio and
Susan Collins, and Chairwoman Nydia Velázquez for working tire-
lessly over the last 11 months to make improvements to the PPP,
especially for the smallest borrowers, growers, and their lenders,
like CDFIs and MDIs.
The community navigator model utilizes local nonprofits or
501(c)(3)s in a complementary non-competitive fashion with exist-
ing SBA technical assistance programs, like SBDCs, the NDCs, and
SCORE. The unparalleled magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic
forced shutdowns and disproportionate impact of small minority-
owned rural business and growers required a comprehensive, com-
mon sense, grassroots response. This community navigator model
we utilize in Illinois, Florida, Texas, and South Carolina to assist
growers, black and immigrant entrepreneurs.
This program assisted Pilar Guzman, whom you will hear later,
introduced by Congresswoman Salazar, the owner of Half Moon
Empanadas. We also assisted Chalmers Carr, the owner of Titan
Farms, the largest peach grower in the country, based in South
Carolina. He was denied a PPP loan by his bank because they did
not understand how to calculate his 1,200 H2A workers. And
Stacey Armstrong, an African American woman entrepreneur, a
single mother, who employees less than 10 people at her gourmet
popcorn shop, and she was denied a PPP first because her bank
prioritized larger firms.
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7
Each of these of entrepreneurs was ultimately assisted in getting
a PPP loan by a community navigator and the self-help federal
Credit Union, a CDFI that understands how to work with small
and rural businesses.
Through this model ABIC directly assisted 219 small businesses
and growers to receive over $8.1 million in PPP loans with an aver-
age amount of $37,000. This community navigator model was later
adopted by the State of Illinois’ Department of Commerce and the
Cook County Illinois Economic Recovery Initiative to disperse local
business recovery grants allocated by the CARES Act. The State of
Illinois awarded $88 million in business recovery grants to black,
rural, and immigrant entrepreneurs.
I have a chart that I submitted as evidence just to show that
using the community navigator model we were able to ramp up ac-
cess to these grants to small, minority-owned, and rural businesses.
A couple of things I just wanted to point out, that as the navi-
gator model ramped up from October to December of 2020, black
participation increased by 25 percent and Latino participation in-
creased between 30 and 46 percent. Over half of the applications
for black and Hispanic applicants were received in November and
December as a result of the navigator’s program technical assist-
ance. And over two-thirds, nearly 70 percent of our Spanish appli-
cations came in November and December as the navigators did out-
reach and document preparation for these borrowers.
In sum, our community navigators had over 20,000 applications
by the end of October and throughout the rest of December and we
were able to award, as I said, up to $88 million.
The last thing that I would just mention is the mechanics of this
navigator model. It is a hub and spoke model. The hub is the lead
nonprofit responsible for capacity building, train the trainers. The
spokes are the grassroots nonprofits, sort of your boots on the
ground conducting direct technical assistance, document prepara-
tion for the businesses. A successful hub and spoke system creates
an assembly line that feeds directly into a financial institution, a
CDFI, and the goal is that the application is in excellent shape by
the time it is received by that financial institution, so we can en-
sure efficiency in processing at scale.
The second piece is there is a high accountability structure to
this model. As you all know, nearly every CDFI, or financial insti-
tution sends a processing number to the PPP applicant when the
application has been received. And so what we require is not just,
you know, general outreach or numbers of emails sent or just
webinars, we ask that each navigator must demonstrate the re-
ceipts for the outreach so that we know that money is getting de-
posited in the banks.
So I will just wrap up and just say thank you very much for the
opportunity to testify on behalf of this model.
Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you.
Ms. Weston, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF BRIDGET WESTON
Ms. WESTON. Chairman Golden, Ranking Member Hagedorn,
and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity
to offer testimony today.
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SCORE is the nation’s largest network of volunteer business
mentors, with more than 10,000 volunteers across 240 chapters, of-
fering free and confidential advice and educational workshops to
small business owners.
Founded in 1964 as a resource partner of the SBA, SCORE has
helped more than 11 million entrepreneurs to start, grow, or trou-
bleshoot their small business. Last year SCORE helped its clients
to start over 45,000 new businesses and create nearly 75,000 new
jobs. And despite the challenging business climate of this pan-
demic, SCORE helped 89 percent of our clients stay in business
throughout the year. SCORE is the most effective, efficient busi-
ness formation and job creation engine funded by the federal gov-
ernment.
In 2020, our costs to create a new job was $156 and $259 to cre-
ate a new business. And for every one dollar appropriated to
SCORE, our clients return $67 in new federal tax revenue, further
demonstrating that SCORE is a good steward of the federal dollar.
SCORE volunteers are the life blood of our organization and are
passionate about helping small businesses succeed. Our volunteers
come from all across the country with diverse backgrounds and ex-
perience in different industries. Our core services are mentoring,
educational workshops, and online resources. Last year, SCORE
volunteers held over 315,000 mentoring sessions, guiding and sup-
porting our clients through the tremendous challenges brought on
by the pandemic.
Many business owners told us they would to have applied for a
PPP or an IDA loan without a SCORE mentor to walk them
through the process. And our high rates of client satisfaction are
captured by our net promoter score of 87, with 70 being considered
excellent.
In addition to mentoring, SCORE provides virtual webinars on
our website and our SCORE chapters offer local workshops that
are in person or virtual. These workshops drew over 464,000
attendees last year.
Knowing that the pandemic has hit some businesses harder than
others, one of SCORE’s key areas of focus is fostering diversity, eq-
uity, and inclusion, both for clients and volunteers. Women and mi-
nority volunteers climbed to 38 percent of total volunteers last
year, and this 5 percent increase represents the single biggest an-
nual growth since we began tracking these metrics in 2012.
SCORE currently serves a diverse range of small business owners;
60 percent of our clients are women and 46 percent are minorities.
Early this year we launched SCORE for black entrepreneurs as
part of our SCORE For All initiative, to help serve disadvantaged
businesses. We plan to add more SCORE For All campaigns to help
these businesses survive and thrive, supporting women, rural en-
trepreneurs, veterans, the 50 and older community, and disabled
entrepreneurs.
SCORE is working harder than ever to reach underserved entre-
preneurs, leveraging our community relationships nationally and
locally. National partnerships include the BIPOC Support Founda-
tion, Women Entrepreneurs Grow Global, and the Latino Coalition
who introduce SCORE to new communities of small business own-
ers. Across the nation our SCORE chapters are already operating
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9
as effective community navigators by working in local communities
to help underserved business owners. For example, over the past
year SCORE Cleveland has rededicated itself to bring its services
to the minority business community. The chapter has partnered
with leading nonprofits that target these communities and services
have more than doubled over last year.
When the pandemic hit, SCORE pivoted to deliver virtual men-
toring and education without missing a day of service. And we ac-
commodated a 30 percent increase in services last year without any
increase in funding. Now, we are at capacity and will not be able
to grow without additional resources. Based on SCORE’s continued
demonstrated impact, increased demand for services, and our plans
to reach more business owners in underserved and disadvantaged
communities, SCORE is respectfully respecting an increase, a $9.5
million in funding, for a total FY2 appropriation of $21.7 million.
That additional funding would be spent to increase mentoring and
education by reducing the administrative burden on volunteers,
provide more direct funding to local chapters for community out-
reach, and focus to help more underserved businesses.
With this relatively small investment we can provide even great-
er value to the business owners and the economy. The increased
funding would allow us to deliver more than half a million client
services, with a projected outcome of 100,000 additional new busi-
nesses started or jobs created.
SCORE’s mentoring and education are critical to helping small
businesses overcome their challenges and succeed. SCORE stands
ready to help our nation’s most vulnerable small business owners
so they can keep their doors open and keep people employed.
Thank you very much for your time, and I look forward to your
questions.
Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you.
Ms. Zavala, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF PILAR GUZMAN ZAVALA
Ms. ZAVALA. Hello. Hi, everybody. It is an honor to be speaking
with you all today. Thank you, everyone, for taking the time to lis-
ten to my story. I think it is a story that reflects, you know, the
reality of many small businesses like mine.
Thank you, Congresswoman Salazar, for that kind introduction.
I am here in Miami, 77 degrees. But so my name is Pilar Guzman
Zavala and I am the CEO of Half Moon Empanadas. I represent
one of the almost, you know, more than 30 billion small businesses
in America. I also represent today the minority in every sense, you
know, I am a woman, I am Hispanic, I am an immigrant. And now
my company is in an industry where there have been so much suf-
fering and torture that I am also one of the, you know, minority
restaurants that are still open.
You know, I came to America from Mexico when I was 22 years
old, right after college. I went to Georgetown School of Foreign
Service because I wanted to understand how to create economic de-
velopment, how to elevate poverty. Little did I know back then that
I would end up creating, you know, an impact as an entrepreneur
in Miami and that my dreams will become clear in a, you know,
in a new food category in America with empanadas, and that this
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immigrant that has a hard time speaking in English in Georgetown
would end up picking the President of the United States.
You know, Half Moon Empanadas, it is a small business in
Miami with a concept of empanadas. Before the pandemic—we
have been in business 12 years, before the pandemic was had 14
stores open. The Miami Airport, the University of Miami, different
non-traditional locations here. And, you know, our story wasn’t
easy. We took us—from the beginning, it took us 7 years to get a
paycheck from our company. We did everything wrong and we al-
most went bankrupt. It took us 10 banks locally to actually get us
our first financing for our store in the airport. So I do know what
it is to go through a financial system and understand how that
works.
You know, when COVID hit, it was literally a year ago, March
13. That week we saw all of our stores closed. In a week, every-
thing was like what happened. It was really scary and I see how
great and how blessed we are to live in this country because we
were able to apply to PPP. It took us three banks. It took us three
banks to get noes because the large fund was not very—it was not
responsive. The medium bank was overwhelmed. And so I—thanks
to the community navigator, I was able to get, you know, the sup-
port that we needed. You know, they connected us with a local
bank that approved us quickly. I think 2 days we were approved.
This helped us to stay afloat and keep our salaries, you know, peo-
ple in payroll. And because I am also a mentor here in the commu-
nity, and I am part of a network of businesses, I joined the effort,
too. And we were able to help with ABIC, with Becca’s team and
Impact Fund here in Miami, other women and Hispanic-owned
companies, to get the support. From processing documentation and
gathering paperwork. We actually got a lot of these businesses ap-
proved for PPP.
And so besides the PPP, we though we entrepreneurs don’t stop
we don’t like to stay still. You know, we didn’t stop there as a com-
pany. We did not only rely on help of the government, we re-
invented ourselves, we became a restaurant in Miami making
meals for seniors through our Miami-Dade County contract and we
started our efforts in the digital space, you know, to send
empanadas locally and nationally.
So when I think about this whole year, I actually was thinking
about [inaudible]. It must have been so hard for all you guys, gov-
ernment officials, you know, trying to figure out what to do and
coming up with an entire package to save our economy and our
community. So I wanted to at least to take 2 seconds to thank you
for the work you have done and for the effort, because it truly has
made a difference in many businesses like mine.
I had the honor to speak to President Biden twice in the last
month. On our first call, you know, I raised my hand. My husband
could not believe that I actually interrupted the President and I
said could I please give you a suggestion. And my suggestion to
him was please remember that the small businesses are not the
large 300 businesses, it is—there are a lot of tiny businesses that
are what I consider truly a small, of one, five, ten, twenty people,
and that we need to focus on that because we are—we sustain the
economy.
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So as we speak today, I am opening one store in Congresswoman
Salazar’s district. I cannot express to you how challenging it has
been to open that store, because of COVID, because how hard it
has been to hire. It is just really difficult compared to before. But
I am a believer and I believe change is possible and I truly believe
that challenges bring opportunities. And so I think this whole crisis
has shown us, you know, all of us how to work together and how
to actually focus on the things that really matter.
I am thankful for President Biden’s leadership and for you guys’
leadership, for Congress to approve, you know, the help. I do be-
lieve that this Community Navigator Program was helpful to me
and to many here locally and that we should, you know, continue
to do this kind of work.
Thank you so much for your time and your support.
Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you.
And finally we will recognize Mr. Strong for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF BRUCE STRONG
Mr. STRONG. Thank you, Chairman Golden. Thanks also to
Ranking Member Jim Hagedorn and Member Pete Stauber, who
are both from the great State of Minnesota, where I live and work.
I would also like to recognize Nydia Velázquez, Chairwoman of the
House Small Business Committee, Ranking Member Blaine
Luetkemeyer, and Representatives Angie Craig and Dean Phillips,
who are also from Minnesota, for their many years of service and
tireless support of small businesses throughout the country.
My name is Bruce Strong and I am the state director of the Min-
nesota Small Business Development Network, or SBDC.
SBDCs have been operating throughout the country for more
than 40 years and in Minnesota alone during that time we’ve pro-
vided more than 960,000 professional consulting hours to help
95,000 clients start 5,200 businesses, helped more than 80,000 ex-
isting businesses, and helped them all to secure $3.2 billion in new
business capital. Since March of last year our staff has worked tire-
lessly and literally day and night to double the number of clients
that we served in a typical year in response to the COVID pan-
demic. Demand for SBDC assistance skyrocketed as business own-
ers needed help with applications for the PPP and EIDL loan pro-
grams, or to reimagine their businesses due to government-ordered
shutdowns.
Recently the U.S. Small Business Administration introduced the
Community Navigators Program. They state the intent of the pro-
gram is to broaden and intensify outreach and technical assistance
to targeted sectors of the small business community, including per-
sons with disabilities, women, veterans, and/or those in minority,
immigrant, rural, or other underserved communities using a hub
and spoke delivery model. We don’t yet have the details as to ex-
actly how the program will operate, but several SBDCs, including
Minnesota, are working with SBA on a pilot of the program to
build models for the future of this effort. A total of $175 million has
been allocated to the program under the American Rescue Plan.
This is a significant sum and we are pleased to be working with
SBA to develop the program. Assuming, that is, there is no require-
ment to provide matching funds for the program.
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SBDCs have long worked with other community organizations to
reach rural and underserved markets, but like other businesses,
the pandemic forced us to reimagine our own business model. To
continue meeting the surge in demand, we are creating even more
partnerships between the SBDC and local community organiza-
tions. In Minnesota, for instance, we just signed a contract with
First Children’s Finance to provide specialized assistance to new
and existing childcare businesses. We are working to complete a
similar contract with the African Development Center to increase
their services throughout the state, and I am seeking to create
even more partnerships.
The Northern California SBDC has just launched a new
inclusivity project that provides a simple but effective approach to
reach out to the black and African community there. It goes beyond
simply providing outreach by creating an actual challenge for the
SBDC and local partners to provide real social change to obtain
capital and start new black-owned businesses. The project has seen
tremendous early success and was met with great enthusiasm
when presented to SBDC state directors across the country just
last week. So much so, that we will be soon adopting this project
for implementation in America’s SBDCs everywhere.
America’s SBDC wishes to express strong support for the Com-
munity Navigators Program and we envision it will fit perfectly
into these plans. We are particularly supportive of the outreach
portion of the funding. SBDCs have too long been a ‘‘best-kept se-
cret’’. We have been prohibited from marketing our services and
that has truly hampered our outreach. That prohibition has only
recently been lifted by the SBA. The Community Navigator Pro-
gram will ensure that entrepreneurship education reaches all parts
of the small business community, and it will go a long way to help
our efforts to reopen the economy.
Thank you and I look forward to your questions.
Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you to all of our witnesses and we
appreciate all the testimony that you shared with us.
I will now move to questions and I will begin by recognizing my-
self for 5 minutes.
I think I will begin with Mr. Strong. I did want to point out that
I agree with Mr. Hagedorn that the PPP program worked well. For
that matter, I agree with pretty much everyone that has joined us
and testified today about that as well. I also look forward to hear-
ing a little bit about H.R. 1411, your bill on PPP in support of farm
partnerships. Last Congress you joined me, Congressman
Hagedorn, in cosponsoring the SBDC Reauthorization legislation,
which we passed through the House. Did not get taken up by the
Small Business Committee in the Senate, so hopefully we can con-
tinue that work in this congress, but.
Mr. Strong, obviously there are some who might naturally con-
clude that some of the groups out there, like SBDCs or SCORE,
could view the creation of a new program such as this one as poten-
tially duplicative or in competition with the services you provide.
You just ended up by putting forward really an endorsement of the
program. So I wanted to give you the opportunity to say a little bit
more about the potential effects of the program, how you think it
will interact with SBDCs. And also if you have any concerns that
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should be avoided in order to make sure that the programs are
really complementary.
Mr. STRONG. Thank you, Chairman Golden.
I don’t view the program as being duplicative or competitive with
what we are already doing. Rather, I view it as being complemen-
tary to what we are already doing. As I mentioned, we have long
had partnerships with other local organizations to help broaden the
reach of the SBDC and particularly to provide deep reach into
those markets that have typically been underserved. We have
worked with the Metropolitan Economic Development Association,
or MEDA, with the Neighborhood Development Center, with other
local nonprofit groups and specifically those that serve communities
and communities of color.
So, again, I believe that the Navigator Program will help us
reach even more community organizations and partner with more
organizations as we have recently done with the African Develop-
ment Center and First Children’s Finance here in Minnesota.
Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you very much. And you made a
great point, by the way about previous prohibitions on marketing
and outreach. What good are these services to businesses if they
don’t know that they exist in the first place. So look forward to con-
tinue to work with the SBDCs and SCORE and others on fixing
that problem in this Congress as well.
Next I guess I would direct a question to Ms. Weston from
SCORE.
Through your work with underserved and rural small business
owners and entrepreneurs, what resources and technical support
are most often requested? And how do you think this new partner-
ship with the Community Navigator Program can help address
these?
Ms. WESTON. Thank you for the question, Chairman.
And with SCORE mentors seeing tens of thousands of small
business owners each year we really do have a pulse on what the
challenges that small business owners are facing. In our mentoring
sessions the common themes that our mentors hear do relate to
funding. Do these small business have position funding or cash
flow, and, along those lines too, attracting and retaining customers.
Those are the two biggest challenges that we see.
With SCORE partnering across the country with local commu-
nity partners, as well as nationally with some of the partnerships
I had mentioned previously, it helps connect those business owners
struggling with funding opportunities, access to capital, cash flow
questions, or customer questions with those people that have been
there, done that expertise. We have seen that the PPP and EIDL
programs were more successful when they were partnered with a
mentor like SCORE, SBDC. And we want these new federally fund-
ed opportunities, which are extremely valuable to these business
owners, be able to take advantage of it. And SCORE mentors are
ready to help those most vulnerable business owners navigate. The
key is to make sure that they are connected to those disadvantaged
and underserved communities.
We are doing that already across SCORE chapters. Maine, for ex-
ample, partners with a number or organizations like the USDA,
the Maine Farmland Trust, to make sure that that one-on-one busi-
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ness mentoring service is provided to make sure they have the best
opportunity for success.
Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you very much for that. And I hear
repeatedly from business owners in Maine about how valuable the
programs and services offered by SCORE are in starting businesses
and making tough decision to keep them going as well. So thank
you for that partnership in Maine.
My time has expired and the Ranking Member, Mr. Hagedorn,
is now recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. HAGEDORN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You know, I was listening to testimony, especially from Ms. Shi
and Ms. Zavala, and they were saying how important it is to make
sure that our small businesses, all of them, have access to espe-
cially Paycheck Protection Program and everything else needed in
order to get, especially at this time, from one side of the
Coronavirus to the other. And so I think the work of the Com-
mittee, led by our Committee Chairwoman Velázquez and ranking
Republican Luetkemeyer, was—and you, Mr. Chairman as well,
and many Members of this Subcommittee, all of them, I think to
extend the Paycheck Protection Program by 60 days, that bill that
was just passed this week, pretty important. So hopefully we can
work with our Senate colleagues and get that done and make sure
that all of our businesses are cared for and have proper access to
the program.
So, you know, Mr. Strong, I listened to your testimony. It is very
good. And I certainly am supportive of small business development
centers and women’s business centers, veteran’s business center,
SCORE, you know, all of it. But you said you think this is more
of a cooperative deal, these navigators, it is not going to be com-
petition with you. What do you foresee them going out and basi-
cally bringing the business back to you? Is that kind of the con-
cept? Or could you, you know, let me know what your thoughts are
on that?
Mr. STRONG. Sure. Thank you, Representative Hagedorn and
Chairman Golden for that question.
Again, the vision for the delivery is a hub and spoke model. In
my estimation that is the SBDC acting as the hub and these local
community partners acting as the spokes. That is similar to how
our model has worked in the past. Oftentimes, particularly with
communities of color, underserved markets and rural markets,
folks really want to talk to somebody from their own community.
They want someone that looks like them that can identify with
them, and that is the strength in my estimation of the community
partners in this hub and spoke and approach.
So I do believe it is going to be effective. I think the outreach can
actually be a combination of that provided by the hub, by the
SBDC, to make sure that folks are aware that the Community
Navigator Program exists and what it does, but then also those
local partners who can reach out specifically to the groups within
their local markets and bring clients into the program that way as
well.
Mr. HAGEDORN. Thank you. I do really appreciate the work
that you do on behalf of Minnesotans and have spoken to many of
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your clients over the last several years who have been, you know,
very much aided by the work that you perform.
And during the Obama Administration we had Obamacare and
we had these community navigators then and there were some
problems with, you know, fraud and just other types of things. Are
there standards in place do you think with the Small Business Ad-
ministration that we can make sure that these folks are going to
be trained up properly and we won’t have any legal or ethical prob-
lems?
Mr. Strong, that is for you again.
Mr. STRONG. Representative Hagedorn, yes, I do—I believe SBA
does a great job of oversight of the program that we currently run,
our regular core program that has been in operation for 40 years.
They have strong measures in terms of metrics and goals that we
must achieve under that program. I believe the same will be true
under the Navigator Program. And as long as we have a clear ob-
jective as to what this program is to do and what it is to accom-
plish, I am fully confident that the SBDCs will absolutely come to
bat and make sure this program is successful, that it meets the ac-
tual challenges. That is already being demonstrated most recently
in this Northern California SBDC program.
So, absolutely, I believe we will—once we set clear objectives and
metrics for the program, we will be able to accomplish them.
Mr. HAGEDORN. I hope Members on both sides would make
sure we do the proper oversight and follow up on that and make
sure what you are saying is going to work out.
Lastly, real quickly, on broadband access—and I will stay with
you, Mr. Strong, since we only have about 30 seconds—how impor-
tant it is that we make sure that folks, not just in rural commu-
nities, but all across the country, wherever they might be, have ac-
cess to broadband and high speed access in order to do their work
and to market their businesses and so forth?
Mr. STRONG. Thanks again for that question, Representative
Hagedorn.
Clearly the COVID pandemic underlined the importance of a
strong broadband network. When we are all confined to our homes
and required to work from our homes, without a strong broadband
network, we are sunk. And that is why I believe that support for
broadband funding is critical. Here in Minnesota the legislature is
contemplating large scale programs to improve and increase the
broadband network. I hope that the same—I trust the same is hap-
pening in other states across the country and I hope nationally we
can come to a broadband program that helps provide a stronger
network across the entire country.
Mr. HAGEDORN. Thank you. I am out of time. Appreciate it.
Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you. The gentleman’s time has ex-
pired. The gentleman yields back.
I will now recognize Representative Jason Crow, Chairman of the
Subcommittee on Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Workforce De-
velopment.
Mr. CROW. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you to all the wit-
nesses for coming in today. Really great testimony and really good
information for us to look at these programs and how to better im-
prove them.
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You know, when I think about the Community Navigator Pro-
gram I am reminded of this program in my district where the City
of Aurora actually partners with the local nonprofit, the Village Ex-
change Center; has a program called the Natural Helpers Program
where immigrants and refugees who have been here longer actually
help fellow immigrants and refugees who have recently arrived ac-
tually navigate nonprofit resources and find their way around the
community and better integrate it. And I think it is within that
spirit that the Community Navigator pilot program is trying to
help our underserved businesses the most.
So in that vein, starting with Ms. Shi, Ms. Shi, can you just tell
me your thoughts on what types of private, nonprofit that are best
suited to serve as community navigators?
Ms. SHI. Thank you so much for the question, Congressman.
We had the same experience at the start of the pandemic. After
the Paycheck Protection Program was rolled out, immigrant owned
businesses, refugee owned businesses, black owned businesses, you
know, came to us and they had not heard about these other SBA
programs or SBDCs. And so we trained local nonprofits, so non-
profits that they know in their community, that perhaps that they
have gone there for English classes or citizenship classes. And so
they started doing the one-to-one document preparation, outreach,
and education about the PPP and [Audio malfunction.]. Sometimes
you can open [Audio malfunction.] and, as you know, unique SBA
processes where there will be a host of hand holding and to get
them access [Audio malfunction.] three lenders that denied her
until we had a navigator that assisted her. And Pilar is much more
sophisticated compared to some of our small businesses and sole
proprietors [Audio malfunction.] to do this kind of work for the
ones that have the grassroots [Audio malfunction.] to our busi-
nesses, our sole proprietors, to all [Audio malfunction.] say do you
know about these programs [Audio malfunction.]. And thanks to all
of you [Audio malfunction.] PPP, but also be retroactive [Audio
malfunction.]. This is the kind of outreach that is important and
one they are made aware of the program, then our navigators like
hold their hand and go through the entire document preparation
for them. You know, because of the pandemic, for a lot of these
smallest businesses, this is their first interaction with a govern-
ment loan or a grant program, right. And so, you know, they are
afraid, they are concerned and it is—you know, we all know if you
check the wrong box, right, that affects your credit score. And then,
you know, getting them access to a lender.
So I would say the best types of nonprofits are not so much—you
know, in our experience, the ones that have done this work before,
but really are willing to get in the gutter and be on the ground and
hold the hands of our small businesses and get them through from
the beginning to the end. And we have a very, very rigorous ac-
countability measure. Because like with Pilar, we need to show
that the money—so.
Mr. CROW. Ms. Shi, I will—yeah, I will stop you there. I want
to give Ms. Zavala an opportunity to weigh in as well. But I appre-
ciate that perspective and your thoughts on that very much.
Ms. Zavala, any thoughts on what you think would be the best
nonprofits that could perform these types of services?
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Ms. ZAVALA. Yes. Thank you for the question.
I saw that the CDFIs, the small—really small one branch, you
know, banks, the Axiom—which now I think it is a different
name—those are organizations that are close to the small—what I
mean when I say close is they understand the issues they have
with not having the perfect P&L, right. I have a perfect P&L. I
didn’t have it 10 years ago. So understanding—I think what is good
about working with the local organizations is that they understand
how to work on the context of that small business, which banks
don’t understand.
So and I think the issue of—you know, it is an issue of capacity.
There is a lot of—there is the SBA, but is there the capacity to
serve all of these? I think the numbers show that there is not the
capacity. We need more.
Mr. CROW. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I am out of time, but
really, really great thoughts.
Ms. ZAVALA. Thank you.
Mr. CROW. Thank you very much.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman GOLDEN. The gentleman yields.
I will now recognize Representative Roger Williams, Vice Rank-
ing Member of the full Committee.
Mr. WILLIAMS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for your
leadership. Ranking Member, thank you. And our witnesses, thank
all of you for being here today.
I am a small business owner myself. I have been in business 50
years and still have my business and employ hundreds of people
back in Texas. And I appreciate your stories. They are just so—
they show the power of this great country.
Attending a trade school and learning a skill can be just as valu-
able as going to a traditional four year college. I am a strong advo-
cate of career and technical education programs and push back
against the belief that a college degree is necessary to get ahead
in America. If someone learns a skill they are on their way to even-
tually translating their abilities into starting their own small busi-
ness. However, learning how to run a small business is not easy
task, as we all know.
So my question, to start out with, Ms. Weston, you touched a lit-
tle bit about this earlier, but maybe you can go deeper, can you dis-
cuss some of the largest challenges you see from young entre-
preneurs who come to your organization wanting to take a chance
and start their own businesses and how any way the SBA can bet-
ter utilize resources to spur new business creation? Because at the
end of the day, risk and reward is the American dream.
Ms. WESTON. Thank you for the question, Congressman.
And we know at SCORE that being an entrepreneur or a small
business owner—and you know this too—is challenging under the
best of circumstances. And this year has been hard on everyone.
SCORE has data that there are some groups of businesses that
have struggled more than others, but being a business owner and
an entrepreneur you feel that you have to be that person who does
everything, that you—you know, you are the Jack or Jill of all
trades and you have to wear all of the hats. What SCORE and
SBDC and other organizations that provide technical support do, is
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we are that step by step guide to these businesses that help them
fill those gaps when they don’t have that information on the P&L,
like small business centers do. You might be an expert as, you
know, a plumber or a hair stylist, but you don’t necessarily have
that knowledge about how to do your accounting. That is where
SCORE and the SBA resources come into play. SCORE stands
ready for small business support for everyone. Some business own-
ers do have unique challenges. We have been talking about histori-
cally under-represented groups and rural business owners and
there are some needs that those groups have a greater need for,
and we can address those too.
The important thing is, with 30 million small business owners
out there that we as the resource partners and the technical assist-
ance, get out there, get the word out, connect with these commu-
nity organizations that have the reach into those communities so
that these business owners know SCORE and other resource part-
ners are here to help and provide that support. And when the busi-
ness owner steps away and uses a mentor to answer those ques-
tions, they are much more likely to successful.
Mr. WILLIAMS. That is great. I think your support find there
is a big difference between the sale of dollar and the gross of dollar.
So thank you for helping on that.
Secondly, I think the Navigator Program has the potential to
help a large number of small businesses realize the resources that
they have at their disposal. However, in the past, there have been
some serious issues of fraud, and we have talked about that this
morning, and of leaking sensitive consumer information that led to
some security threats against individuals.
Since we just allocated $100 million to this program, we must
make sure that we are making good—or being good stewards of
taxpayer dollars and not repeating the mistakes of the past.
So, Ms. Shi, for you can you discuss what safeguards the SBA
should put in place to ensure that this program is not opening
itself up to waste, fraud, and abuse?
Ms. SHI. Yeah, absolutely. And thank you so much, Congress-
man, for that question. And that is extremely important.
So when we ran the navigator model in several states, including
Texas, Florida, and South Carolina, we asked all of our navigators
to show receipts for the PPP received by their small businesses. So
that is part of our accountability structure. You know, I think it
is very easy just to send a whole bunch of emails and do a webinar
and say that, you know, we assisted businesses, right, but we actu-
ally—especially during this global pandemic as our businesses are
struggling—we need to see that these funds are getting into the
bank accounts of our small businesses as well as staying with them
to go through the forgiveness process to turn the loan into a grant.
So that is number one.
And number two is working with a trusted CDFI—and the I—
or financial institution, to make sure that, you know, all the Ts are
crossed, Is are dotted. And, you know, as we know with our finan-
cial institutions, there are also multiple layers of assurance and ac-
countability.
But, so that is extremely important to us and this is taxpayer
dollars and these are the local engines of our economy. And so we
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need to make sure that these funds are getting to the folks that
need it the most.
Mr. WILLIAMS. Okay. Thank you to the witness. And I yield my
time back.
Chairman GOLDEN. The gentleman yields.
I will now recognize Representative Pete Stauber from Min-
nesota’s 8th District.
Mr. STAUBER. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thanks to all the wit-
nesses for providing the testimony today.
And, Mr. Strong, thanks once again for coming to our Small
Business Committee hearing and testifying. I am sure all the Min-
nesota Members really appreciate you coming here again and giv-
ing us quality time.
I would just like to give you a moment to share what worked for
the Minnesota SBDCs, what has it looked like during the pan-
demic, and how has it changed from what you had done prior to
the pandemic?
Mr. STRONG. Thank you, Representative Stauber. Thank you
for those kind words.
What has changed for us is the sheer volume of the questions
and the demand that we are receiving from the public. Obviously
the Paycheck Protection Program and the EIDL loan programs
were critical to those small businesses that were most affected as
a result of the pandemic. And helping those businesses wade
through the myriad regulations for both programs, both the PPP
and EIDL loan programs, and the changing requirements that oc-
curred during the launch of those programs, just caused so much
confusion in the marketplace. We spent a great deal of time just
trying to decipher those changes ourselves and then interpret those
changes to the small business community so that we could most ef-
fectively help them apply for their loan, or help them apply for for-
giveness under the Paycheck Protection Program. We are still to
some extent struggling with issues regarding that. And this latest
deadline of the Paycheck Protection Program expiring and hope-
fully being extended just kind of creates ripples throughout that
program.
As Chairman Golden stated, SBA processed 14 years-worth of
loan applications in a 14-day period of time.
Mr. STAUBER. Mr. Strong——
Mr. STRONG. That, you know, by itself is going to cause prob-
lems.
Mr. STAUBER. Mr. Strong, I want to just thank you and your
organization for helping out the small businesses and helping with
the lending institutions, because when we passed that legislation
there were some blind spots. And when we knew better, we did bet-
ter with the flexibility portion afterwards.
Mr. Strong, prior to the pandemic northern Minnesota was
plagued with a childcare desert. The situation got worse during the
pandemic. In your testimony you mentioned that Minnesota SBDC
signed a contract with First Children’s Finance to provide special-
ized assistance to new and existing childcare businesses.
Can you elaborate on this? On the work you are doing?
Mr. STRONG. Certainly. Thank you again for the question.
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First Children’s Finance has been around for a long time. They
are a nonprofit group, they are a CDFI as well. They specialize in
helping childcare businesses with all of the nuances, the legisla-
tion, and the requirements that are expected of a childcare busi-
ness. And so partnering with them the SBDC will help broaden—
the outreach will help broaden their outreach. It helps bring fund-
ing to them so they can pay additional counselors to come along-
side. But it also helps the SBDC because we can help with the
business aspect of running a childcare business, even though we
may not necessarily understand all of the nuances of those require-
ments.
And you are exactly right, the childcare industry was struggling
even pre-COVID. In Minnesota we found that small businesses
were unable to grow because their employees weren’t able to find
adequate childcare, particularly in rural markets.
We are hoping and trusting—we believe that partnering with
First Children’s Finance will be of great benefit to the SBDC and
all Minnesota businesses.
Mr. STAUBER. And, Mr. Strong, I think that is really great
news because we know when there is adequate, secure childcare
that benefits the economy, especially coming out of this COVID cri-
sis. We want to make sure that the workforce is there to be had
and having safe, secure childcare is certainly a priority.
So, Mr. Strong, once again, thank you for your testimony, and we
will see you shortly.
And, Mr. Chair, I yield back.
Mr. STRONG. Thank you.
Chairman GOLDEN. The gentleman yields.
I will now recognize Representative Claudia Tenney from New
York’s 22nd.
Ms. TENNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to
Ranking Member Hagedorn, and the witnesses as well. Great to
hear from all of you. And thank you for holding this important
hearing.
Obviously the COVID-19 situation has been challenging for all of
us, all Americans, and especially our small business community,
which are truly the backbone of our economy. And I can’t empha-
size that enough. As a small business owner in New York’s 22nd
District, over 94 percent of the workforce in my district come from
small businesses. So our community’s success, our economic suc-
cess, depends on the success of our small businesses.
Last week I launched a small business outreach tour to meet
with business leaders and employers across the 22nd District. So
far I have met with over 30 businesses, have spoken with hundreds
in the past, and have had the opportunity to discuss their priorities
and their needs for relief and recovery.
The two common questions that I get are what programs and re-
sources are available and, second, how do we navigate some of
these cumbersome applications processes and rules. And I know as
a business owner, also as an attorney, federal programs, you know,
have helped thousands of businesses in my state, particularly in
our underserved and rural communities, which my district is. We
must continue to reach out to these underserved communities and
educate our employers on how to use these resources and their em-
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ployees. It is also imperative to understand that these programs
need to be made simpler and easier to use because so many small
business owners are so busy running their businesses they really
don’t have time to hire compliance teams and teams of lawyers.
And I know that as my business was started over 75 years ago and
I have been one of the owners for over 35 years, so I understand
how complex this can be. And I really appreciate our witnesses.
And my first question—and some of these have been answered—
I would like to address to Ms. Weston. And first I want to say
thank you so much for SCORE. I have—as a business owner also,
many of my colleagues have used SCORE and it has been a won-
derful asset to people in the business community. So I just wanted
to ask you, so many of these business owners have said this is—
getting the money and the Navigator Program has been so
daunting. What do you consider the biggest barrier and what rec-
ommendations do you have to fix those issues? Briefly, if you could.
Ms. WESTON. Well, thank you so much for the question, Con-
gresswoman. And maybe one day you will consider becoming a
SCORE volunteer since you are a small business owner yourself.
So one of the things that we heard from our clients, especially
as it relates to PPP and EIDL, was just that Congress acted so
quickly, there was such a drive to help these small business own-
ers, and when things were really done quickly there was confu-
sion—how to apply, who can apply for these loans, what that proc-
ess is. And so what SCORE was able to do is set up our small busi-
ness resilience program, which paired mentoring, check list, and
step-by-step guides that were industry specific to help these busi-
nesses navigate the challenges they are facing.
So we saw nearly 600,000 people through that portal to help an-
swer questions in a timely, specific, guided fashion so that we could
get them to the right lender, the right program, the right resource.
What we have seen is that these guides, mentors from SCORE or
other resource programs, are what can really help make these fed-
erally funded programs successful. And the communication would
be helpful across lines collaborating with other resource partners
and other agencies.
Ms. TENNEY. And as you say that, I know you recommend more
communication. We also have state programs that are now going
to be enhancing some of the federal programs. And so that is where
I consider SCORE would be a great resource for us to be able to
access them.
Thank you, though. I appreciate that.
And for Mr. Strong, I wanted to ask a question about childcare,
which is really important to me as a single mom, how important
it is to have reliable safe childcare. But Mr. Stauber hit that ques-
tion, but I was just going to ask you in looking at this model, a
lot of businesses—this pandemic is forcing everyone to reimagine
their business model. And in response to the demand, what would
you say for the SBDC, what could we implement in a rural setting
to help people in a pandemic for the future and how do we best
reach out to some of these people in rural settings? I am running
out of time, but if you could answer real quick, I would appreciate
it.
Thank you.
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I guess I will yield my time back. I am sorry.
Mr. STRONG. I lost your audio. I couldn’t get the question.
Ms. TENNEY. Mr. Chairman, we will address it in another meet-
ing.
Thank you so much. We will catch up with you in a private set-
ting.
Thank you.
Chairman GOLDEN. The gentlewoman yields. Sorry about the
technical difficulties. And we can submit it for the record if you
like.
Ms. TENNEY. Absolutely. You need more broadband. Thank you.
Chairman GOLDEN. That is the truth.
I will now recognize the Ranking Member of the full Committee,
Blaine Luetkemeyer from Missouri’s 3rd Congressional District.
Welcome, Ranking Member Luetkemeyer.
Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you
all of the witnesses.
I have been listening in my office and trying to keep a lot of balls
in the air this morning here. I apologize for getting here a little
late. But, you know, one of the things that concerns me are—that
I have been watching here is that, you know, I had a meeting this
week with an SBIC group, a small business investor, and they were
telling me that they were doing basically what the navigator pro-
posal in this CARES Act, or the funding bill, actually was doing.
So I mean I am curious—you know, they were trying to bring to-
gether all the different groups, whether the chamber or the librar-
ies—in fact is one of the groups they were talking about, as well
as historic and black colleges that they were working with and
some other partners. So if they are already doing this, is this really
necessary? What is your—can you explain to me? Mr. Strong, for
instance, can you give me the reason why this is a good deal? Or
should we continue it or change it around? Or what is your sugges-
tion here?
Mr. STRONG. I am sorry, Congressman. I lost the last part of
your question.
Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Okay. I was curious as to whether you be-
lieved—or what your opinion would be with regards to the neces-
sity of the Community Navigators pilot program here in the
COVID relief bill because I was talking with some folks in SBIC
this week and they do the same thing—some SBDC folks that are
doing the same thing.
So are we duplicating services I guess is my question?
Mr. STRONG. Well, thank you, Congressman. I appreciate the
question.
And, again, it is going to be a challenge. It is always a challenge,
especially when Congress is trying to act in as robust a fashion as
they are. It seems like a lot of these programs are duplicative, but
I think it is simply going to help increase the outreach and the ef-
fectiveness of the partnerships between SCORE, the SBDCs, the
Women’s Business Centers, and all of their local community organi-
zations to provide even greater outreach into markets that haven’t
historically been very well served.
We continue to hear about underserved markets, particularly in
communities of color and in rural markets. The more folks we can
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have out there helping the existing small businesses and potential
small businesses, I think the better.
Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Can you explain to me who all is going to
qualify for this money and how they get it?
Mr. STRONG. No, I am afraid I can’t. We haven’t gotten the de-
tails of the program yet. I have only seen it in concept form. We
are anxiously awaiting what the actual details of the program will
be, eligibility criteria, and more importantly, or just as importantly,
the metrics and goals that we hope to achieve through the pro-
gram. I think that speaks to your question about effective use of
this funding. We need to have clear cut goals, we need to have
clear cut eligibility, and we need to have clear cut metrics for the
outcomes of the program to evaluate its success.
Mr. LUETKEMEYER. If we are delaying—and SBA has got a lot
of balls in the air right now. They have got a lot on their plate and
I am very concerned about that. I am working with them on a lot
of other issues right now. And if it is going to be a delay in getting
this information out, putting this program together, how worth-
while is it if you wait until September to get it done, for instance?
If we wait, you know, 4 or 5 months here, is it still going to be ef-
fective? Or is it—at that point we will be over the hump, so to
speak, such that it is not going to be necessary?
Mr. STRONG. Thanks again, Congressman for the question.
I believe that the problem with underserved markets has been
around a lot longer than the COVID pandemic. I think anything
that we can do to help increase outreach to those markets is going
to be beneficial. You know, if a delay—and hopefully it won’t be 4
or 5 months before we get clearer marching orders on the pilot pro-
gram isn’t necessarily going to have an overall impact on its effec-
tiveness.
Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Just a quick question for you with regards
to the other programs that are out there. I am not sure you are
involved with them, but just to kind of get your opinion on them
real quickly. With regards to the restaurant program, for instance,
are you working with any of the groups? Do you think that is going
to be pretty impactful, those restaurant grants?
Mr. STRONG. I don’t think there is a more important program
out there than the restaurant grants. But, again, we have seen ab-
solutely no details on what it will do or how it will work. But I can
tell you—and Minnesota is not unique here—the hospitality indus-
try has been decimated as a result of COVID and the required
business closures that took effect as a result of that.
So absolutely we must provide some support to the restaurants
and hospitality industry.
Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Well, I think the key—I thank the Chair-
man for his diligence here—but I think the key is going to be how
these grants are doled out, how they are applied for, and how
they—what kind of oversight is provided over them because I think
it is a situation that is ripe for fraud if we are not careful. And I
think hopefully you will work with us to provide some expertise in
this so we can find a way to minimize that.
With that, I yield back the balance of my time.
Thank you.
Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you. The gentleman yields.
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And we would now recognize Representative Maria Salazar from
Florida’s 27th for 5 minutes.
Ms. SALAZAR. Yes, and thank you very much, Chairman.
I want to congratulate Ms. Pilar Guzman because I think you are
the epitome of the American dream and we need more people like
you in this country. People that came with really not knowing any
English, as you said, but willing to work and to take advantage of
this fantastic American dream, or the American system that the
Founding Fathers put together for people like you and me. So I
think that we not only have love, but gratitude for this country.
And I am sure that you feel the same way.
And, look, not only were you able to come, you were able to stay,
you learned the language, you went to school, and then you put to-
gether a business, came COVID, and the government gave you
money so you could keep that business. Where does that happen?
Nowhere else. Is that true? Nowhere else. And that is why I con-
gratulate you and I think that we Hispanic Americans, first gen-
eration, we should celebrate what a fantastic country we have. And
that is why I am in Congress, because—and you are in business—
because we want to keep this system for the future of our children.
Am I right?
Ms. ZAVALA. Yes, I support that 100 percent.
Ms. SALAZAR. and I just wanted to ask you, in which way we
could spread the word and help other businesses like yours, specifi-
cally in our district, Miami and south Florida in order to—what
else do you think we could do in order to send a message and give
the info to people like you in order to continue living the American
dream?
Ms. ZAVALA. Yeah, thank you for that question, Congress-
woman.
I think that it is crucial that we support groups like ABIC, like
Impact Fund here in Miami. I saw how hard it was for me, and
I am a little bit sophisticated in the sense of, you know, I have sys-
tems in place, I have, you know, financials in place. It is so hard
as a small business to understand what the PPP was, how to apply
to it. You know, the bank wasn’t replying. So, you know, ABIC in
that sense helped me connect to the opportunity because I couldn’t
get in. With all my network in Miami, I could not get the PPP. So
imagine the majority of the businesses that don’t have that net-
work, that are not mentors to other businesses, that don’t have the
community connections, they need ABIC, they need Impact Fund.
And what I say is, you know, it is great with the SBA, you know,
has done, you know, during the crisis and before, but we must rec-
ognize that the numbers don’t lie. This is not about parties or emo-
tions, it is about numbers. And so we need to look at the numbers,
who is getting the finance help. And why is it that the under-
served, you know, communities don’t have that access to financing.
And in this case the PPP—the PPP just highlighted the systemic
problem we have.
And so I think that one of the challenges is that we need more
technical assistance, we need more, you know, guidance in how to
getting a small loan, because we are lost. Access to information and
having these local partners working one-on-one with businesses
that already know them, it is important.
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Ms. SALAZAR. And I thank you, because that is why I created
a prosperity center within my congressional office. And I am glad
that you are telling me that information is power. Because the
more info that we put out there into the community for people like
you—because like you said, that you had certain knowledge. There
are many other businesses that are not as sophisticated or have as
much information as you have.
So thank you for that.
I am not sure if I have to yield my time back or if I have a few
more minutes. I don’t have the——
Chairman GOLDEN. You still have a minute to go if you would
like to ask another question.
Ms. SALAZAR. I could have—yeah.
And now let me ask you this, what about the—like you were say-
ing, I have to definitely recognize the local people in the Impact
Fund, our local partners who are with the American Business Im-
migration Council, ABIC, to help you connect and to give you those
tools and that information, that technology or know that informa-
tion, basic knowledge in order to be able to navigate the system
and get to the money.
Now, the info in Spanish, even though you were knowledgeable
in English, what else can we do for those people that also want to
live the American dream but still do not understand the literature
in English? What have you found out there? Do we need to promote
more material in Spanish?
Ms. ZAVALA. Yes. I mean I think that first we need to just have
the information available. You know, people were just lost in the
process. Like nobody knew what to do with the PPP. And so, yes,
it will be very helpful to have it in Spanish as, you know, the ma-
jority of our businesses here locally are Spanish speaker busi-
nesses. So certainly that is important and that is I think one of the
barriers for many of our businesses.
Ms. SALAZAR. Thank you very much for that info. Thank you
Ms. Guzman. Looking forward to meet you when I go down to
Miami.
Ms. ZAVALA. Thank you, Congresswoman.
Ms. SALAZAR. I wish you a lot more success in opening up many
more Half Moon Empanadas shops.
Ms. ZAVALA. Thank you.
Ms. SALAZAR. I yield back. Thank you, Chairman.
Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you very much.
I am going to ask a few more questions, so second round if Mem-
bers can bear with me. I certainly recognize if you are not able to
stick it out, however, Mr. Hagedorn, but if you do have more ques-
tions, I am happy to recognize you after.
Thank you to the witnesses. Just a few more questions.
One of them—I guess I will just follow up with you, Ms. Zavala,
because that was a really good exchange right there. You know,
early on in the pandemic my office was hearing from many, many
businesses who were very eager for help from EIDL, from PPP, had
a lot of questions. SBA staff were very busy working with the
Treasury trying to build the program, and as a result people were
really struggling to get information.
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One of the things that the American Rescue Plan authorizes at
SBA is a call center, where business owners such as yourself could
call to get information, how do I apply, you know, what are the
guidelines, you know. Many people were very concerned about tak-
ing the loan not knowing how they might qualify for forgiveness.
These types of questions were everywhere. And as you said earlier,
people were very concerned.
Do you think that having a call center that you could have called
at the beginning when you were contemplating the Paycheck Pro-
tection Program and things like EIDL, would have been helpful?
And would you have called it if it had existed?
Ms. ZAVALA. Thank you for the question, Chairman.
Yes. I mean I think that as the information is what was missing,
the access is what—sometimes people were lost. Even before the
pandemic, think about it, like where do you get financing. I get
those questions all the time when I do mentorship. I get texts from
companies, from people, I need support for this financing wise. Like
there is a lack of information. And so, yes, a call center—there was
an effort here in Miami led by the city Foundation where they put
together a website with like specific questions about where to get
the help during COVID, the loans or the individual help. And so,
of course, those are important efforts.
Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you very much.
You know, I also wanted to say just thinking about the early
weeks and months of the pandemic and the emergency it caused
for a lot of small businesses, I actually had almost my entire team
establish what we called a task force completely focused on aiding
small businesses and accessing the EIDL and PPP. Even my D.C.
staff were on the phone lines trying to develop expertise to connect
business owners with assistance.
And, you know, I think it was one of the beautiful things that
this Committee really took part in early on. Having had the PPP
established—it wasn’t perfect, we had to roll it out. And there was
a lot of great oversight done by the entire Committee that resulted
in follow on actions that improved the program over time and
more, you know, accurately targeted it where it needed to be to
have the biggest impact as time went on. A really important effort.
And one thing I—you may be aware, maybe you are not—I actu-
ally voted against the American Rescue Plan, but as Chairman of
the Subcommittee I certainly intend to take part in that kind of
collaborative oversight to make sure that these programs are very
successful for all the businesses that are out there. Certainly there
is a lot of need that remains.
So another question I wanted to ask for Ms. Shi, you ran the
pilot program on the Community Navigator Program in various dif-
ferent states, could you talk a little bit about some of the issues
you came across that SBA and this Committee should be aware of
in order to avoid those same mistakes occurring as the program
rolls out nationally?
You are muted. I am sorry, ma’am. Go ahead, try again. Looks
like we may have some technical difficulties. We will submit that
one for the record.
Ms. SHI. Is this better?
Chairman GOLDEN. Yes.
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Ms. SHI. Oh, I am so sorry about that.
Yes, so some of the issues that we identified were the access to
lenders, were for the sole proprietors, the Schedule C issues of not
being able to have a fuller relief through the calculating with the
gross income. And I would just say that because these were the
boots on ground, it sounds similar, Chairman, with your office. Al-
most seems like you had your whole team as navigators. But really
holding these small businesses’ hands to get these loans and then
helping to turn the loans into the grants were some of the issues
and that we reflected back to the Committee, to the Chairwoman
Velázquez—and thank you for her leadership on this—and to try
to get the program major improvements over time as we have seen.
And just the other issue I think a couple of times that has come
up about the accountability and the anti fraud measures. The other
thing that we did in our program is to make sure the navigators
and organizations that weren’t producing, that were not helping
businesses get the money in the bank, were defunded from the pro-
gram, right. So that this is—we are in a pandemic, we are in an
emergency, we require high performance and that these businesses
like Pilar’s, and even smaller employers, do get the funds that they
deserve and do it quickly, so.
Chairman GOLDEN. Thank you. My time has expired on the sec-
ond round. So I did want to make sure to offer an opportunity for
further questions to the Ranking Member.
Mr. HAGEDORN. I have no more questions at this time. I would
be happy to yield to our Ranking Member for any further question.
But thank you.
Chairman GOLDEN. Very good.
Well, I want to thank all of our witnesses for joining us today
and all of the feedback that you provided. And certainly appreciate
you bearing with us through all the technical difficulties that exist
out there. Some people have commented on the side here more evi-
dence of the need for this Committee to stay focused on access to
high speed internet, particularly for small business owners all over
America. And I think I heard the Ranking Member comment he
looks forward to having everyone back in the Committee. I couldn’t
agree more.
But, with that, just some closing remarks.
You know, to the witnesses, your testimony today will be valu-
able as the Administration and this Committee moves forward to
stand up and fine tune the Community Navigator Program. For a
nearly a year COVID has hit underserved, agricultural, and rural
small businesses particularly hard. Congress has taken many steps
to make relief programs such as the Paycheck Protection Program,
EIDL, and others there for small businesses more accessible, equi-
table, and to ensure that our small businesses get the greatest, you
know, help out of this Congress and these programs as possible.
But certainly there is always room to continue to make improve-
ments.
Today we have heard about the impact that this program could
have in underserved small businesses. That is why Committee
Members need to do everything we can to ensure that the program
is sped up and run effectively and efficiently without waste on get-
ting the help into the hands of those who need it the most.
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So, with that, I look forward to continuing to work with my fel-
low Committee Members and the Committee staff as we take a
look at the roll out of this program and continue to support things
like the Paycheck Protection Program, as we just extended the abil-
ity of small businesses to access that program through the remain-
der of the month of March.
With that, I think I will go ahead and close it out and ask unani-
mous consent that Members have 5 legislative days to submit
statements and supporting materials for the record. And, without
objection, so ordered.
[Whereupon, at 11:34 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[Ms. Pilar Guzman Zavala did not submit her QFR’s in a timely
manner.]
SBD026 with DISTILLER
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APPENDIX
SBD026 with DISTILLER Insert offset folio 29 here 43802.012
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SBD026 with DISTILLER Insert offset folio 30 here 43802.013
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SBD026 with DISTILLER Insert offset folio 31 here 43802.014
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SBD026 with DISTILLER Insert offset folio 32 here 43802.015
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SBD026 with DISTILLER Insert offset folio 33 here 43802.016
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SBD026 with DISTILLER Insert offset folio 34 here 43802.001
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SBD026 with DISTILLER Insert offset folio 35 here 43802.002
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SBD026 with DISTILLER Insert offset folio 36 here 43802.003
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SBD026 with DISTILLER Insert offset folio 37 here 43802.004
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SBD026 with DISTILLER Insert offset folio 38 here 43802.005
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SBD026 with DISTILLER Insert offset folio 39 here 43802.006
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SBD026 with DISTILLER Insert offset folio 40 here 43802.007
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SBD026 with DISTILLER Insert offset folio 41 here 43802.008
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SBD026 with DISTILLER Insert offset folio 42 here 43802.009
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SBD026 with DISTILLER Insert offset folio 43 here 43802.010
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SBD026 with DISTILLER Insert offset folio 44 here 43802.011
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SBD026 with DISTILLER Insert offset folio 45 here 43802.017
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SBD026 with DISTILLER Insert offset folio 46 here 43802.018
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SBD026 with DISTILLER Insert offset folio 47 here 43802.019
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SBD026 with DISTILLER Insert offset folio 48 here 43802.020
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SBD026 with DISTILLER Insert offset folio 49 here 43802.021
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SBD026 with DISTILLER Insert offset folio 50 here 43802.022
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SBD026 with DISTILLER Insert offset folio 51 here 43802.023
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SBD026 with DISTILLER Insert offset folio 52 here 43802.024
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SBD026 with DISTILLER Insert offset folio 53 here 43802.025
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SBD026 with DISTILLER Insert offset folio 54 here 43802.026
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SBD026 with DISTILLER Insert offset folio 55 here 43802.027
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SBD026 with DISTILLER Insert offset folio 58 here 43802.030
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Æ
SBD026 with DISTILLER Insert offset folio 59 here 43802.031
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File and source
- File
- CHRG-117hhrg43802.pdf
- Size
- 7,974,863 bytes
- SHA-256
- 2b55671e0b1d8d2794915c5658d24fc11c09a07621ccb21247527d8b6b36f6dd
- Our copy
- CHRG-117hhrg43802.pdf
- Original
- www.govinfo.gov