Karen Mills Quotes

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Karen Mills

Profession : Public Servant

Birth : September 14, 1953

After four years as Administrator of the SBA, I have let President Obama know that I will not be staying for a second term. I will stay on until my successor is confirmed to ensure a smooth and seamless transition.

Karen Mills

Small businesses, you can give them capital, but what they often need as much is mentoring, advice and help with their business plan.

Karen Mills

We are not going to be the agency where large businesses can masquerade as a small business and get a contract. We are closing down on fraud, waste and abuse.

Karen Mills

My family was in two businesses - they were in the textile business, and they were in the candy business. The conversations around the dinner table were all about the factory floor and how many machines were running and what was happening in the business. I grew up very engaged in manufacturing and as part of a family business.

Karen Mills

President Obama vowed in his State of the Union address to make assisting domestic manufacturers a top priority for his second term.

Karen Mills

The S.B.A. does not lend directly to businesses, but instead backs loans to encourage banks to invest in small businesses as part of a nearly $90 billion portfolio.

Karen Mills

If you want to have prosperity here, we really have to see our small businesses able to grow and compete around the world.

Karen Mills

I saw the S.B.A. with just enormous potential, and that's what I told the president - this is really a jewel.

Karen Mills

The 2009 stimulus law got the ball rolling, allowing the agency to reduce and eliminate fees and raise loan guarantees to 90 percent of the total. I knew that we had the opportunity to use S.B.A. products to fill that gap in a rapid manner, as we ended up doing in the Recovery Act.

Karen Mills

Health care is the No. 1 concern of small businesses and the status quo is untenable.

Karen Mills

We have to keep the momentum going in the economy. And we have to make sure that we give small businesses as much cash and liquidity as possible so they have the confidence to hire that next worker.

Karen Mills

This has always been a small agency with a big mission. But these days, especially, we have to stand up every day, deliver value into the hands of small-business owners and get taxpayers the biggest bang for their buck so that we can help these job creators do what they need to do.

Karen Mills

We don't want to give a business that is not going to come through the troubled waters a loan that they can't pay back.

Karen Mills

I haven't checked this out yet, but one of our guys told me we have a counselor within 45 minutes to an hour of most small businesses in this country. That's really powerful. I call it our bone structure.

Karen Mills

Our economy creates and loses jobs every quarter in the millions. But of the net new jobs, the jobs come from small businesses: both small businesses on Main Street and many of the net new jobs come from high growth, high impact businesses that are located all across the country.

Karen Mills

We were able in the Recovery Act to get a program where we increased our loan guarantees to 90 percent. Because we had that program, a bank wouldn't have to take that much risk.

Karen Mills