By Senator John F. Kerry Kerry is the Chairman of the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship Word Count: 771 From the Industrial Revolution to the iPod, our country's economy has been built on great ideas and individuals with the courage to bring them to life. Small businesses are the backbone of the American economy - they create jobs, grow the economy, and develop the innovative technologies that will help us tackle our biggest challenges. But small businesses do need a champion in government to make sure that their voices are heard in Washington. The Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship's job is to promote fair competition and help create new opportunities for America's 26 million small businesses. These entrepreneurs may start out small, but the contribution they make to our economy is huge -- and particularly important in underserved communities. In the 110 th Congress, we're in a position to get some things done for America's entrepreneurs. Small businesses' worries are America's worries, and it's no surprise that many of the same concerns that face American families today—issues like health care costs, global warming, taxes, and access to capital—are especially applicable to our small businesses. We must help relieve small businesses of the crippling burden of skyrocketing health care costs. The current system penalizes owners and employees alike: premiums for a family of four are 87% higher today than they were in 2000, and at least 27 million Americans working for small businesses don't have health insurance today. Many small businesses lack the resources, time, and bargaining power to deal with these rising costs. And fewer and fewer businesses are offering benefits as a result. I have introduced three proposals that will give small businesses access to functioning insurance markets, ensure that they and their employees have adequate health coverage, and make insurance more affordable for everyone. Specifically, we must insure the 11 million uninsured children in this country. Many are the children of small business owners or the self-employed who are likely to be eligible for Medicaid and S-CHIP, but are not yet enrolled. Second, it's time to enact a 50% refundable tax credit to small firms that provide coverage to their low- and moderate-income employees. And finally, we must strike a new partnership with employers, workers, and government to share the financial burden of the most expensive medical cases. Energy costs have also risen at a staggering pace and that correlates with the catastrophic effects of global warming. While small businesses are developing the clean energy technologies of the future— they also can be part of the solution. In my home state, Cambridge-based Metabolix is using biotechnology to produce environmentally-friendly plastics. They used a Small Business Innovation Research grant to finance their groundbreaking project. That kind of funding not only helps small businesses develop exciting and essential new products —it also helps us to create a cleaner, greener America. We can do more to help small businesses increase their energy efficiency and ease the burden of high energy costs. I'm currently looking at ways for the government to assist small businesses with energy audits that have yielded savings of 30% for businesses in Pennsylvania. And we should extend loans to small businesses harmed by high energy costs. Finally, we must focus on expanding access to capital, including to minorities, women and veterans —making sure that our nation's best business ideas have enough seed money behind them to become full-blown success stories. That is why Senator Olympia Snowe and I introduced the Invest in Small Business Act last week and will be introducing the Small Business Lending Reauthorization and Improvements Act this week to help entrepreneurs get the financing they need. Tax incentives are a great way to encourage investments in small businesses to give them working capital. For individual taxpayers, our bill increases the partial exclusion for gain from certain small business stock from 50 to 75 percent and decreases the period for which they are required to hold the stock. Corporations will be eligible for the exclusion and individuals will have an effective capital gains tax rate of 3.75% for small business stock. The result will be new small business investors eager to fund a greater number of small businesses that will in turn see greater profit. Small businesses create more than two-thirds of all new jobs in America, employ more than half of the private sector work force, and pump over $900 billion into the economy annually. As small businesses are creating and living the American dream, they should be able to count on the government to help create an environment where they can do what they do best: innovate, compete, and create good jobs for Americans. The Boston Globe 05.02.07 Healthy businesses and healthy workers By Senator John F. Kerry Word Count: 561 Massachusetts has set an example for the rest of the country by taking bold steps to provide quality health coverage for everyone. Now it's time for Washington to do the same by bringing meaningful, affordable health care to the uninsured - in Massachusetts and across America. But we are learning in Massachusetts is that there's still a major obstacle in the overall goal of universal coverage: cost. We can't solve the problem of the uninsured unless we also tackle the issue of skyrocketing health costs to families and businesses. Fully reforming our health care system will require that the federal government begin shouldering some of the burden to help alleviate costs. The truth is that catastrophic illness drives costs up for everyone. Right now, 1% of patients account for 25% of health care costs, and 20% of patients account for 80% of costs. To make health care more affordable, we must find a better way to share the immense burden of insuring the sickest among us: the chronically ill and seriously injured. Part of the reason that businesses and health plans today fail to cover their workers is an aversion to risk—a fear that they will be saddled with a sick employee whose high premiums will bankrupt them. Take a small business with just 5 employees, for example. If one worker has a major heart attack, the cost of care for the other 4 shoots up, potentially causing the company to drop health coverage entirely. But there's a way to combat these costs. And Washington should make employers and health care plans an offer they can't refuse. It's called "reinsurance." Reinsurance means that if employers agree to offer all of their workers preventative care and quality coverage, then the federal government will reimburse them for a significant portion of the costs of their chronically ill employees. It's simple: if the federal government can help small and large businesses bear the burden of cost in the most expensive cases, we'll dramatically improve the health of everyone. This week, I will introduce the Healthy Businesses, Healthy Workers Reinsurance Act, a bill that will make government a partner in helping our businesses with the heavy financial burden of those catastrophic cases: those that use over $50,000 in a single year in health care costs. Healthy Businesses, Healthy Workers will protect business owners from skyrocketing premiums, and provide more working families affordable, quality health care. The Daily Collegian 04.20.07 Out of apathy and into action: What you can do By Senator John F. Kerry Word Count: 750 Massachusetts students are justifiably proud of their world-class universities and a tradition of public activism older than the United States itself. That is why I was surprised and saddened to read in Monday's Boston Globe that our state ranked 44th nationwide in its rate of student volunteerism. I have met college activists at every school in the state who impressed me with their seriousness, smarts, and dedication. And yet so many of their classmates are choosing to stay on the sidelines and do nothing to help their communities. Across the country, volunteer rates fell in 2006 for the first time since skyrocketing after the attacks of September 11. Today - National and Global Youth Service Day - we can and we must do better. As we face tragedy together, the need to help each another is at its greatest. Tragic events like the student massacre on Virginia Tech's campus raise critical questions about whether we are meeting the needs of the mentally, socially and financially distressed among us . Our nation is strengthened by the community support, compassion and involvement of its citizenry. We cannot let anyone fall through the cracks. The good news is that the people of Massachusetts are volunteering more than they have in a generation and rates are continuing to climb. Furthermore, these rates of growth in volunteerism are increasing more rapidly than any other state in the last four years. But we are playing catch up with the rest of the country when we should be leading it. It is time to call upon the youth of Massachusetts to set the example as leaders in community volunteerism for the rest of the nation. Boston College is leading the way in community activism. More than half of its students are involved in volunteer work. 600-700 students volunteer in Appalachia each spring break, while others commit to working at least four hours a week in homeless shelters, schools, and other non-profits. I applaud the efforts of those students who do volunteer—but again, I believe we can and we must do better. I know that, as students, it's easy to feel powerless—as if everybody is talking at you and nobody is really listening. I remember what it was like to be your age during another tragically misguided war in Vietnam just like the one we face today in Iraq. No doubt, the awful news coming out of Washington makes many of you wonder if you should just steer clear of politics. But please--- get involved and stay involved. This state and this nation need you to fight for the issues you care about. Again and again, students have changed the world. In every major social movement—not just civil rights but also women's rights and social justice movements everywhere—the front lines are almost always students. So just because politics may have disappointed you, don't lose hope in politics. We need change, and we need your input. I cannot tell you how good it feels to know that you were part of making things go right. So how can you make a difference in your community? We can all do our part, whether it's joining an organization on campus, volunteering in a soup kitchen, writing a letter to your representative on an issue of concern to you, mentoring a younger student or simply reaching out to a troubled peer. With luck, we might even be able to prevent the occurrence of the kind of tragedy that befell Virginia Tech's campus just a few days ago. As Robert Kennedy once said: "Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." After Vietnam when vets were fighting for vets against a lot of politicians who hid behind slogans, some would weigh in against us saying "My country right or wrong." Our response was simple: "Yes, my country right or wrong. When right, keep it right and when wrong, make it right." That's our mission - yours and mine - to get off our rear ends - go out - and make it right today.