Today, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), Chairwoman of the House Committee on Financial Services, gave the following statement at a Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Financial Institutions hearing entitled, “Small Businesses, Big Impact: Ensuring Small and Minority-Owned Businesses Share in the Economic Recovery.”

Thank you very much, Chair Perlmutter, for holding this important hearing on small businesses and the challenges they face when applying for loans. I think you know, and everybody knows now, that our Committee has this as a high priority to see to it that we correct some of the wrongs and the discriminatory practices that have been employed by the banks. But in addition to that, we saw when we responded to the pandemic how the big banks, who were handling the PPP program, took care of their concierge clients and left our small businesses and our minority businesses basically hanging. And we had to come up with 60 billion more dollars. I worked with Ms. Velázquez to do that, so that we could put money into our MDIs, our CDFIs, our credit unions, and our community banks, and they got that money out to our small businesses very quickly.

In addition to that, we have $12 billion that we have put together. I worked with Mr. Warner to do that, and of that $12 billion, $1.25 billion of that has been given out already, and the rest will go through the Treasury Department.

So, Mr. Perlmutter, and most of our Members on this Committee, are poised at working to do everything that they can to support small businesses.

I thank you so very much, Mr. Perlmutter, for this hearing.

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