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Floor Speech

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am happy and proud to join my senior Senator in congratulating our friend Mark Hayward, the District Director of the Small Business Administration in Rhode Island, on his very well-deserved retirement after serving at SBA for more than 40 years. It is a really remarkable career.

In that time, as Jack said, Mark strengthened small businesses all across the Ocean State and created economic opportunity for Rhode Islanders from every community and background.

He was so well regarded within the SBA that he was actually called down to Washington for a detail to help break in a new Small Business Administrator who needed to learn the ropes. The person that the organization trusted to get her going and working in a good way was Mark Hayward. Of course, he came back to New England and back to Rhode Island.

Jack mentioned Mark's role in the pandemic. He had actually told us he was planning to retire before the pandemic, but he couldn't walk away from what was happening. So he went to work to make sure that Rhode Island did a good job in the pandemic.

It was not easy. These were big new programs that we had created, and implementing them and getting the money to flow smoothly through the banks and undoing the clogs that emerged and the different errors that were experienced was a big project.

Mark made Rhode Island a model of good implementation of our pandemic response. Other SBA offices around the country looked to what he was doing and modeled on that.

It was just a pretty gallant and wonderful thing that he was willing to remain at the helm through that difficult period, to work through these big programs and make them succeed and to help small businesses across our State through a period of real financial uncertainty and peril. Mark and his team delivered much needed Federal funding to businesses in every community, often providing a lifeline that allowed small business owners to keep their doors open and to keep their people on the payroll.

That pandemic reinforced what we already knew about Mark. He knows Rhode Island's small businesses better than anybody, he is determined to be helpful, and he will stand up and rise to the occasion when the demand is there for his skills.

So I join Jack in congratulating our friend Mark on an incredible run. We thank you, sir, for your dedication to lifting up small businesses across Rhode Island and for your commitment to public service. We have loved working with you.

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