Recognizing Significant Contributions Of U.S. Automobile Dealerships

Floor Speech

Recognizing Significant Contributions Of U.S. Automobile Dealerships

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Mr. AL GREEN of Texas. Madam Speaker, I thank the managing Member for yielding me this time, and I also thank the Member who is managing for the other side for allowing this important piece of legislation to come to the floor. I want to thank Representative Hensarling who is not here today. He is in Financial Services, and we have a hearing there that is exceedingly important; but for that, I am confident he would be here. He and I serve on the committee together.

Representative Hensarling and I have been working on this resolution for some time. For us it has become a means by which we not only developed what I believe to be a good piece of legislation for the House, but also we have developed a good relationship as a result of working together. This is truly a bipartisan piece of legislation. We have 107 cosponsors from both sides of the aisle.

I also would like to thank Representative JOHN DINGELL for helping us with this piece of legislation. He, at a crucial time, stepped forward to help us move the legislation such that we are now on the floor with it. I would also mention the staff members from Congressman Hensarling's office and from my office, my staff, I thank you for what you have done, Representative Dingell's staff, and all of the persons who have been associated with this piece of legislation, especially Representative Capps because I thank you for helping us get it to the floor as well.

This resolution, H. Res. 713, does two things: it recognizes the significant contributions of the auto dealerships; and it expresses the sense of the House of Representatives that dealerships which were successful, and I highlight and underline successful, dealerships that were successful and are being closed, some have been closed because of the economic crisis, that these dealerships be given consideration when the market rebounds and we start to bring on new auto dealerships. It is an opportunity for consideration.

With these two things in mind, I would share these thoughts: one, that the auto dealerships are the face of the auto industry within our various communities. As the face of the industry, they do more than simply sell cars, which is a good thing to do. Selling cars promotes growth and jobs, and helps us have people who are employed, but they do more than this. They also engage in being good corporate citizens, which means that they allow their largess to be shared by various not-for-profit organizations in the community, various community organizations that are involved at the grass-roots level in communities. For example, the Little League baseball teams will often be sponsored by auto dealerships. Other small, but significant, organizations in our communities benefit from these auto dealerships.

They are across the length and breadth of the community in large cities and small towns. They make it possible for us to experience the opportunity of having largess that we would not ordinarily have, and I will tell you that that largess is being sorely missed at this time of economic crisis. So we want to get them back. We want to get them back online because they are good corporate citizens.

My next point, 20,000 independently owned dealerships exist across the country--maybe a little more, maybe a little less, depending on who is counting and how you count--employing about 900,000 people, new car dealerships alone. These 900,000 jobs are jobs that our country benefits from greatly, and we have missed many of the jobs because of the dealerships going offline. We want to see these dealerships give the community the job base it has enjoyed by virtue of these many persons who were trained to do various and sundry things, giving these jobs back to the community.

Bringing them back will be an important part of these dealerships coming back online as a result of the rebound in the economy. In 2008, there was about $650 billion that we can call revenue generated from the dealerships. They are truly small businesses at their best, and some of them large businesses because of just the sheer amount of revenue that they generate. But they are small businesses that benefit greatly from what we are trying to do in Financial Services today, but they are also small businesses that cause a community to benefit greatly because of what they do in the various communities wherein they are located.

I would simply remind us that as we vote on this, please, dear friends, give thought to your community; give thought to the fact that this is a small business that brings jobs back to the community; give thought to the fact that these corporations are good corporate citizens, for the most part; that they are part of the fiber and the fabric of the communities; that they help the Little League baseball teams, the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, all of these organizations that benefit from their largess; and give some thought to the fact that but for them, many of our communities would not be as vibrant as they are. In fact, many of our communities are not as vibrant as they were because we have lost some of these various small businesses, these auto dealerships.

I beg all of my colleagues, please support this resolution. It encourages us to do the right thing, and that is give these dealerships that were successful that went offline the opportunity, not because of some fault of their own but because of some economic crisis that they had little control over. In fact, no control over for the most part.

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