Jump Start Our Business Start Ups Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. CARNEY. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to encourage all my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, to support this important piece of legislation to create jobs.

In December, Representative Fincher and I introduced H.R. 3606, the Reopening American Capital Markets to Emerging Growth Companies Act of 2011. Today, our legislation is the vehicle for a package of bills to help small businesses access capital and grow.

I'd also like to recognize Mr. Fincher and his staff, Jim Hall and Erin Bays, for their bipartisan work on this bill. I would also like to thank Ranking Member Frank and Representative Waters for their assistance and leadership throughout this process.

The original bill, H.R. 3606, which is contained in the bill today before us, will create jobs in part by making it easier for emerging growth companies to undertake IPOs and go public. On average, research tells us that 92 percent of a company's growth, job growth, occurs after they go public. But in recent years, the number of companies going public has fallen off dramatically.

This legislation takes a commonsense approach to reduce the cost of going public for these so-called ``on ramp'' status companies by phasing in, not exempting, by phasing in certain costly regulatory requirements. Our bill creates a new category of issuers called ``emerging growth companies.'' They have annual revenues of less than $1 billion and, following the initial public offering, less than $700 million in publicly traded shares. Exemptions for these on-ramp status companies would either end after 5 years or when the company reaches $1 billion in revenue or $700 million in public float.

The legislation will also make it easier for potential investors to get access to research and company information in advance of an IPO, and this is an issue around which there's been quite a bit of discussion in committee. This is critical, though, for small and medium-sized companies trying to raise capital that have less visibility in the marketplace.

Last month, these provisions were passed out of the Financial Services Committee with a bipartisan vote of 54 1. We've worked hard to craft legislation that could garner support from Democrats and Republicans and that can pass both the House and the Senate. And as you heard earlier, it's supported by the administration. In fact, many of the ideas in this bill were generated out of a process started by the Treasury Department itself.

Making it easier for small and medium-sized companies to grow is an effective way to create jobs and improve the economy, and we all know how important that is to the constituents that we serve. This legislation will encourage more entrepreneurs to start businesses and allow more start-ups to become public companies and grow and create jobs.

Please join me in supporting H.R. 3606.

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