skip to navigation | skip to content
Inslee listens to a constituent.

Montage of Wing Point in Bainbridge Island and the Edmonds Ferry.

Jay Inslee: Washington's 1st Congressional District

Home > Issues > Global Warming > Green Business

Issues

Global Warming

Inslee, Welch make small business bill green

27 September 2007

The House today approved legislation that would modernize small business investment programs. The Small Business Investment Expansion Act, H.R. 3567, included two green amendments offered by U.S. Reps. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.).

"Small businesses are the backbone of the U.S. economy, and are positioned to be the brains behind the clean-energy revolution," said Inslee, a champion of aggressive policies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and co-author of a forthcoming book entitled Apollo's Fire: Igniting America's Clean Energy Economy. "This legislation will help American innovators and entrepreneurs turn their ideas into products that will prevent worst case climate change predictions and create green-collar jobs."

The first amendment, approved by a voice vote, would give special consideration to privately-owned companies licensed by the Small Business Administration (SBA) to provide debt and equity capital to small businesses that create technologies, manufacture goods or provide services that reduce carbon-dioxide emissions.

A second Inslee-Welch amendment also was approved by a voice vote. It would expand the types of operational assistance available to small businesses in low income areas under the New Market Venture Capital Program. Specifically, it would allow federal funds under the program to pay for making new or existing facilities more energy efficient. This not only would increase profitability of small businesses struggling to pay energy costs, it also could improve working conditions for employees through the utilization of sustainable practices such as natural lighting. Currently, help only is provided for marketing and other business development efforts.

"In the 1960's it was the Space Race and today it's a race to produce clean-energy technologies," added Inslee, who serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. "We need all need all hands on deck to win, including our nation's 26 million small business."

The Small Business Investment Expansion Act reforms SBA programs to assist small business owners, including veterans and women, with obtaining the investment capital necessary to start or grow their operations and improves access to venture capital and angel investments for these entrepreneurs. The SBA investment programs have been gutted, resulting in more than $60 billion in unmet capital needs for small businesses each year. The House passed it today at 6:20 p.m. EDT by a vote of 325 to 72.