U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell stopped at downtown Vancouver’s Dolce Gelato Italian Cafe on Tuesday morning to stump for Democratic causes — and for fellow senator Patty Murray, who is up for re-election.
Cantwell assured coffee shop owner Courtney Staehely that Dolce Gelato and other struggling businesses will benefit from the newly passed Wall Street reform bill. Cantwell also promised that an upcoming bill would take the reorganization even further. If passed by the Senate in September, the Small Business Jobs Act would help small companies access the bank lending that has become somewhat scarce over the last year and a half, said Cantwell, D-Wash., who is serving her second term in the U.S. Senate.
“When you can’t get the capital, you can’t grow your business,” she said.
Her visit was part of a two-day tour of the state to stump for her Democrat comrade, Murray, D-Wash., who faced popular Republican challenger Dino Rossi in Tuesday’s primary. Both were expected to advance to the November ballot.
Cantwell sits on the Small Business Committee and the Senate Finance Committee, which were both involved in writing the bill.
She said Murray also supports the Small Business Jobs Act, which would create a $30 billion fund for community banks to lend to small businesses, increase limits on existing Small Business Administration loans and give additional federal tax breaks to small businesses.
Supporters say the proposal, which passed the House in June, would free up credit that has been frozen for many worthy small businesses. However, the bill has been blocked by a Senate Republican filibuster.
Rossi has opposed the lending plan as another “bailout.”
“We want to get the message out that Senator Murray supports small businesses and so do I,” Cantwell said.
Over coffee, Cantwell listened while Staehely talked of the challenges to her small coffee and gelato shop, which fronts Eighth Street about one block west of Esther Short Park.
In January 2009, Staehely temporarily lost access to credit when the Bank of Clark County was shut down by state regulators. Over the last year and a half, Staehely’s shop sales have suffered, which she blamed, in part, on consumer cutbacks and reduced foot traffic.
“We have lease payments and all of these bills to pay, and that doesn’t change. Our income does, but our bills don’t,” Staehely said.
Her business also suffers with each neighboring shop that fails or moves to another location.
“It just brings less and less people downtown. We just can’t survive that,” Staehely said.
Staehely told Cantwell that she has put on hold plans to hire at least one new employee, which would have eased scheduling staff around the shop’s morning and lunchtime crowds.
That sort of hiring is essential to local and national economic recovery, Cantwell said.
The unemployment rate nationwide hovered at 9.5 percent for the second month in a row in July, with 14.6 million workers unemployed, according to the U.S. Labor Department. Clark County’s unemployment rate was 13.3 percent in July, with 28,510 people out of work, the state reported Tuesday.
“If every small business would hire just one person, you’d have half of those jobs back,” Cantwell said.
