John Kerry Vows to Push SBA on Katrina

[kerrygoddess]

John Kerry Vows to Push SBA on Katrina
May 6th, 2006 @ 12:32 pm

John Kerry was in New Orleans yesterday, he joined Senator Mary Landrieu (D-La.) on a “Back to Business” tour of New Orleans East, an area with significant damage from Hurricane Katrina (see earlier post here).


Kerry talks with business owner Marianne Lewis and author Doug Brinkley (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports…

Small-business owners struggling to recover from Hurricane Katrina told Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry on Friday that their companies are about to go under for want of help from the Small Business Administration, prompting the senator to vow “to raise the roof” when he returns to the U.S. Capitol, where he is the ranking Democrat on a Senate committee devoted to helping small businesses.

In a seven-hour tour guided by U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., Kerry talked with business owners operating amid piles of debris in eastern New Orleans near the Industrial Canal. He visited Our Lady Queen of Vietnam Catholic Church, a center for revitalization in the east, and listened to the testimony of several dozen bankers and small-business owners at a forum at St. Maria Goretti Catholic Church.

The day’s common theme: The Small Business Administration is overwhelmed and not nearly flexible enough to deal rapidly with thousands of loan applications from cash-starved businesses, some quickly draining their owners’ personal savings.

“The record is obviously disastrous,” Kerry told small-business owners. “The government ought to be working spontaneously, willfully and effectively for people, not slowly and begrudgingly and reluctantly.

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