Transcript:
Representative María Elvira Salazar: Thank you, and wonderful to see you again Isabel Guzman and thank you for your visit to my district number 27, the City of Miami. It was a highly productive visit I should say and I am sure that from now on my small business owners are going to be enjoying the best service that SBA can provide so thank you for that. Thank you for taking the time and going, catching a plane, and going to Miami. Very grateful. I just want to share a few small glitches that we have. One of them for instance is a 140-billion-dollar problem, and what is that? It is the COVID testing. Every time someone comes to this country, international tourists, that person needs to get tested 24 hours before getting on that plane and that measure is killing the tourism industry in Florida, specifically in Miami. And you know Miami is the hub of international tourism in Florida. So, could you please tell the President next time you see him in one of those cabinet meetings that we need to do away with that measure? Will you be able to do that?
Small Business Administration Administrator Isabel Guzman: I will, you know, definitely relay your concerns to the White House and our team will continue to flag this issue and work with you to see what we can do to help better support our travel and industry small businesses, which we know have been impacted by so many factors.
Salazar: Because you know Florida is open for business and my small business community is eager to be selling those services, but if you don’t have people, then you cannot make the payroll at the end of the month. So, you understand that. So, since you are there with the President, I would very much appreciate if you can tell him that this is killing us.
Guzman: I continue to advocate for our small businesses and I appreciate that...
Salazar: But will you be able to tell the President in one of those cabinet meetings that this is happening and it’s crushing our small business entrepreneurs?
Mrs. Guzman: I will definitely flag for the White House, the issue. Thank you.
Salazar: Alright, thank you. So you have a pretty good budget, over a billion dollars, and it’s getting bigger probably next year. But we discovered something that is troubling, Madam Guzman. The budget assigned for salaries, for regional, and district offices is going down, not up. But in the meantime, your decision has been to increase the money in the hands of the Washington bureaucrats. I believe that someone who is sitting in D.C. cannot serve, understand, or care as much as one of your guys sitting in one of those district offices that the budget is getting cut for the salaries in those. And even more, I’m going to share with you whets happening in Miami or in Tampa is that we only have one district office in South Florida for two million small businesses. We don’t even have a permanent district director. Is there any reason behind cutting money at the regional level and giving it to D.C.?
Guzman: Over time as we’ve had to increase salaries and benefits and decrease of some of these positions, I understand that all of our offices have been impacted. This budget would allow us to regain some of those positions across the agency and we have continued to try to empower the field to make sure that we gather those key insights that our team on the ground can share with us...
Salazar: You can impower them by hiring them and paying them good salaries but right now, you’re cutting those budgets.
Guzman: We are committed to making sure that we can help improve our staffing plan across the field and that includes trying to ensure that their positions are maintained and that they are receiving the benefits of our expansion.
Salazar: Finally, I have one more minute, I just want to ask you a personal question. You are one of the most prominent Latinas in the administration, so we have the same cultural code. Your parents are Mexicans, you understand the border, you know what's happening down there. Aren’t your concerned, that’s the concern that I have, that what's happening at the border is giving a very bad rep to Hispanics, to the Latinos? Because we don't have any type of legality down there and my concern is that it could be changing the favorable perception that other groups have of us – the largest minority in the country. So, when you sit with the president, don’t you express that from a very personal point of view, because your parents are Mexican descent? Mine are Cuban, so we belong to the same minority. Please give me your personal thoughts. If you want to share that with us.
Guzman: Well, what I would share is that I have continually advocate and make clear that the face of entrepreneurship is changing and I would like to portray Latinos as the ones who are leading on that because they are starting businesses at the highest rate and across most states according Mckinsey studies, so that entrepreneurship and that face of entrepreneurship...
Salazar: And we know that, that we create, we’re probably the highest creators of jobs but when it comes to the border, that could be harming the rest of our plan of wanting to live the American Dream. Yes, or no? Don’t you think that’s what's happening right now?
Guzman: I agree that I would want everyone to know that the Small Business, the face of the Latino community, is entrepreneurship.
Original source can be found here.
