INTERVIEW: Rep. Roger Williams rings in Small Business Week: "Everything Trump is doing is geared towards small business"

THE LOWDOWN:

• Rep. Roger Williams (R., Texas), the Chairman of the Small Business Committee, has run a small business for almost 60 years and has a message for both the mom-and-pop shops and the Dallas Cowboys: “It’s a great time to be in business in America.”

• Williams said help is on the way. He told the Washington Reporter in an interview that “we'll get [the Trump tax cuts] done by the end of May.”

• Main Street America, Williams emphasized, cares far more about tax cuts than tariffs.

• Williams, himself a long-time car dealer, said that his industry hasn’t even seen any tariffs hit yet — but he said that he’s not “afraid” of them regardless.

Rep. Roger Williams (R., Texas), the Chairman of the Small Business Committee, has run a small business for almost 60 years.

And the Texas Republican has a message for both the mom-and-pop shops and the Dallas Cowboys: “It’s a great time to be in business in America.”

Williams said help is on the way. He told the Washington Reporter in an interview that “we'll get [the Trump tax cuts] done by the end of May.”

“We’ve got to do it,” Williams said of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act extension. “Why haven’t we already done it? We came out with a program out of the House, which was great, versus the Senate, they dragged their feet a little bit.”

“I'm hoping, like the Speaker does, that we can have it done by the end of May,” he continued. “There's some who say by the Fourth of July, that's fine, get it done. But I'm just telling you, Main Street America is not talking tariffs.”

“Main Street America is talking about tax cuts,” he added.

Williams explained that Trump’s tax cuts benefit both employers like him and his employees. The former supports the tax cuts because “it cuts payroll taxes.” The latter backs it because “they want more money in their pockets.”

Additionally, the bill “allows 100 percent expensing, which is huge, where you buy equipment and write it off the year you buy it.”

Main Street America, Williams emphasized, cares far more about tax cuts than tariffs.

“Of course, the press wants to talk about tariffs and this and that, but they need to be talking about the opportunities out there,” Williams said.

Williams, himself a long-time car dealer, said that his industry hasn’t even seen any tariffs hit yet — but he said that he’s not “afraid” of them regardless.

“I'm aware, and the industry is aware, but we're not afraid, because this industry has always had a way to get around and take problems and turn them into opportunities and turn opportunities into development, and you're going to see that in the auto industry right now,” Williams said.

“I think there'll be deals made. You'll see manufacturers commit to redoing plants, commit to building plants. If they can get that done in five years, maybe they cut a deal where for five years they don't have any taxes or whatever. But you just see stuff like this happen, but the auto industry is going to be thriving. I told my staff the other day, ‘if we don't have a good year, that’s nobody's fault but our own.’”

Williams also told the Reporter that Trump’s move to visit a General Motors factory in Michigan on his 100th day in office was both great politics and policy.

“The president was right” to go to Detroit,” he said.

It’s not only Trump who Williams has been eager to work with — the Texas Republican is partnering with both Small Business Administration (SBA) Administrator Kelly Loeffler and Sen. Joni Ernst (R., Iowa), his counterpart across the Hill, to create new opportunities for American small businesses. All three, along with Trump, have spent years working in the private sector.

“Between tax cuts and higher opportunities with the SBA, and 100 percent expensing, what a great time to be in business,” he told the Reporter. “We just got a jobs report last week that showed 177,000 new jobs; we are rolling…we're gonna come up with some really good stuff, and I’m excited about it.”

One of those policies is a Texas-style bounty system of sorts that puts Americans on commission just like how Williams has worked for decades in the auto industry. Williams wants to empower Americans to claw back the billions of dollars of fraud from coronavirus-era relief programs.

“Let's empower everybody to find this money,” he said. “We're not going to find $220 billion, but let's just say we found $50 million… That’s taxpayers’ money, it's your money and it’s my money. People made a deal. They said they’d pay this stuff back, then pay it back. And so I'm all over that, and that's what we're doing.”

Williams’s plan, he said, is “unheard of,” and it is quite simple: “If you'll find money that is missing, and you bring it back, the Treasury will pay 10 percent of what you found, and if it comes from back from China, we'll pay you 15 percent.”

With Loeffler, Williams has a partner at the SBA, in contrast with her predecessor Isabel Guzman, who Williams was forced to subpoena following reports about the SBA “register[ing] Democrat voters in Lansing, [and] in Detroit.” Those subpoenas were the first his committee had issued in over two decades, and they were needed “because we couldn't get anybody to cooperate with us and tell us what they were doing and why they were doing it.’

“That's not going to happen again,” Williams said.

Throughout Small Business Week, Williams and his committee are spotlighting shops from across America — his favorites in his district, other than his own, are the Texas Rangers and the Dallas Cowboys. But he has a sweet spot for others that make morning commutes a little more tasteful.

“It's the fellow who has the donut store and opens up at 5:30 in the morning to take care of people going to work,” he said. “It's the oil industry. They're rolling dice every single day. The Medal of Honor Museum also just opened in Arlington, Texas, and that is well worth a visit too.”

Below is a transcript of our interview with Rep. Roger Williams, lightly edited for clarity.

Washington Reporter:

This is Small Business Week. You’re the chair of the Small Business Committee — tell us about your priorities in terms of working with the Trump administration and also with the Republican Senate on all things small business.

Rep. Roger Williams:

Small businesses are what America is about. And of course, with Senator Loeffler being the administrative head of the Small Business Administration, along with Joni Ernst and myself, we've got some business people who have a vision for where we want to take small business; Loeffler running the SBA is a great deal because the SBA got off track a little bit. We’re getting it back on track. We just raised the limit on manufacturing loans from $5 million to $10 million, which is huge, because now that lets businesses expand even more. It's going to be more employees, more workforce, more opportunities. It's going to be great. Those are the kind of things we're trying to do, and we're going to be getting the message across the country that we're open for business. And then people can come and get a loan, and banks can work with the SBA and help Main Street again. It’s now Small Business Week, and we're showcasing a lot of businesses and so forth that are coming in — from mom and pop stores to maybe larger businesses. Tax reform is also going to fit right into small business, because people will be able to make more money, and when they make more money, they'll save it, they’ll spend it, they’ll hire more people. 100 percent expense is going to come on board. Now they can write off equipment the year that they got it. Between tax cuts and higher opportunities with the SBA, and 100 percent expensing, what a great time to be in business. We just got a jobs report last week that showed 177,000 new jobs; we are rolling. Of course, the press wants to talk about tariffs and this and that, but they need to be talking about the opportunities out there. I'm a Main Street guy. 57 years I've been in business, I’m still in business, I’ve put hundreds of people back home in Texas to work, and when you go back and all over the country, Main Street doesn’t want to talk about tariffs. They want to talk about the tax cuts. So we want to help them get that quicker than later. And so that's kind of where we are. It's great time to be in business in America. And to what we're doing, overseeing the SBA and working with Kelly Loeffler, and with Joni Ernst on the Senate side, we're gonna come up with some really good stuff, and I’m excited about it.

Washington Reporter:

Can you talk about the role of small businesses in Texas and in your district? You mentioned that they're less concerned about tariffs and more concerned about tax policy. What's been the difference in the 100 days of the Trump administration?

Rep. Roger Williams:

Our country was headed down a bad path on November 4th, and then on November 5th we elected Trump, and you can turn the lights on, Now, people have a pop in their step. Businesses felt good. Businesses felt like, ‘well, now I can be a business. I can go to my bank and borrow money.’ One of the biggest things that the Biden administration did was completely cut off how a lot of the community banks worked with Main Street America. There were so many regulations put on community banks. Now, we reduced a lot of that and banks can stay in business. People can get in business. People can stay in business. And it all happened just with the election. On November 5th, the American people spoke. 75 million people said ‘I want fewer regulations. I want lower taxes. I want more opportunity. I want to have risk. I want to get rewarded from the risk.’ All that happened overnight. And so back in Texas, we have a district that's populated in certain areas where there are more cows than there are people; there are a lot of rural areas, but we have a lot of big city too, like Fort Worth and Cleburne, and people are excited, and people are getting getting going again. They don't have to be woke. They talk like they want to talk, and put people to work. So it's a good thing. It's not all about tariffs. The press wants to talk about that. It's not all about that. It's about getting more money in the hands of the people, because the greatest workforce in the world are Americans; we’re the greatest country, we have the greatest economies right here. Now, you put more people in there to be able to put more of their capital in there, and access to capital has been the biggest problem for small business in the past few years under Biden. There were so many regulations put on community banks that it was almost cheaper to not make the loan.

Washington Reporter:

You’ve spent almost six decades in small business — how has this informed your perspective in Congress and as chairman of the Small Business Committee?

Rep. Roger Williams:

Well, being in business and making payrolls and all that kind of thing, shows that it continues to be evident that capitalism is the greatest system in the world. Capitalism, free markets, competition, create net worth. The government creates a job. The private sector creates a net worth. And so what you see is that competition, if the government will stay out of Main Street, and just do three things — collect our taxes, defend our borders, and help us with infrastructure — and let Main Street work and compete against each other, we can thrive. Because on Main Street, we compete against the federal government. They don't need to be competing against the federal government. I want to compete against you. And then who benefits from that? Customers. They get service. Service sells more stuff after that. So that's what's happening and that's what small business wants, and that's what small business is getting.

Washington Reporter:

On his 100th day, President Trump went to a General Motors factory in Michigan. You know a little bit about cars and selling them. How has the president's auto agenda specifically been playing out? They've placed a lot of emphasis on Michigan with it, but how has it also been impacting Texas?

Rep. Roger Williams:

Don't take this the wrong way, Michigan, but we’re not looking at what happens in Michigan. Texas has kind of its own economy. It’s the 7th or 8th largest economy in the world. However, the president was right in going to Detroit, going in to where the auto manufacturers are made, because through the years, it's always been a liberal side of unions and all that sort of thing. But he's gone in there, and he's made some promises that he's already keeping. He's forcing some of the auto manufacturers to come back. He's making them redo plants. He’s making them hire people. He's bringing the industry back with the idea. And of course, my industry has got parts made everywhere. And naturally, you want to ask me about about the tariffs, but being the auto business, I'm not afraid of tariffs. I'm aware, and the industry is aware, but we're not afraid, because this industry has always had a way to get around and take problems and turn them into opportunities and turn opportunities into development, and you're going to see that in the auto industry right now. We haven't had any tariffs yet. President Trump talks about this and that, but I think there'll be deals made. You'll see manufacturers commit to redoing plants, commit to building plants. If they can get that done in five years, maybe they cut a deal where for five years they don't have any taxes or whatever. But you just see stuff like this happen, but the auto industry is going to be thriving. I told my staff the other day, ‘if we don't have a good year, that’s nobody's fault but our own.’

Washington Reporter:

I want to go back to Trump in a second. But two of the investigations that you did during the Biden administration were very interesting. One was on how the Small Business Administration was partnering with liberal organizations to register voters, and then another one was on COVID fraud. What do you see next on those?

Rep. Roger Williams:

Under Biden, the SBA worked on electioneering, they closed their offices, leaving small businesses hanging, to go register Democrat voters in Lansing, in Detroit, and sign these MOUs with these states, that was horrendous. That's not even in the SBA’s purview. We couldn't get any answers. That's when we started subpoenaing. I issued the first subpoenas out of this committee in 25 years because we couldn't get anybody to cooperate with us and tell us what they were doing and why they were doing it. That's not going to happen again. We're still trying to find out some answers, but we’ve also got to move on, because we don't want to get stuck up in the past. We've got a lot ahead of us in the future. And then you’ve got the money that's missing out of the idle funds, and money that is missing from PPP, which they had no desire to go to track this money down. They wanted to write it off and do all those sort of things. Administrator Loeffler and I have talked about several things; you’ve got $220 billion that's missing out of PPP. Where'd it go? We're not going to find $220 billion but we do have a program in place that's been scored positively by the CBO, where we’ve put America on commission. And this is unheard of. I put all Americans on commission: if you'll find money that is missing, and you bring it back, the Treasury will pay 10 percent of what you found, and if it comes from back from China, we'll pay you 15 percent.

Washington Reporter:

That’s almost a Texas-style bounty system.

Rep. Roger Williams:

I've been on commission all my life. Let's empower everybody to find this money. We're not going to find $220 billion, but let's just say we found $50 million. That's a lot of money. Then the other thing is, there are also $79 billion of 3 percent loans that haven’t been paid from the idle funding, and they want to just write it off. And I'm talking about factoring that money like you would account for stable in a small business when you sell it off to someone else to get cash. Leave that to the private sector, the banks and let them discount it, and let us take the difference into this. I would think that they might discount those 3 percent loans at 90 percent. Well, 10 percent of $79 billion is $7.9 billion that we can send to Main Street America, and help businesses stay afloat. Those are the kind of things we're doing that come out of a business person’s perspective. Loeffler is a business person, Joni Ernst is a business person, these are kind of things we're doing to try to keep things from being just written off. That’s taxpayers’ money, it's your money and it’s my money. People made a deal. They said they’d pay this stuff back, then pay it back. And so I'm all over that, and that's what we're doing.

Washington Reporter:

And jurisdictionally, when someone comes to you with the bounty, does that get referred to the Department of Justice? How does that work after that?

Rep. Roger Williams:

Right now we want the money going to Treasury so we can get the money in the bank. Then we’ll see what happens after that, I just want to start getting the money back.

Washington Reporter:

It may be safe to say that former Administrator Guzman has your cell phone number blocked, and Loeffler maybe has you on speed dial. How's that change in relationship been working out?

Rep. Roger Williams:

I'm a small government thinker, whereas Administrator Guzman — who was a nice lady, but we saw things very differently — is a big government person, but she's not there anymore. It's Loeffler now, and we're doing these kinds of things we couldn't do with the other side.

Washington Reporter:

You spoke a little bit about the auto industry — but more broadly, how have you seen the Trump administration's agenda, whether it's with trade, tariffs, or tax cuts, affect and help small businesses around America?

Rep. Roger Williams:

Everything they're doing helps small business, like demanding lower interest rates. You’re talk about less government. You're talking about putting money back in the system. You're talking about letting people like myself go factor money if we get that done and get money in the system. So everything Trump doing is geared towards small business. The truth of matter is when we talk about small business, everybody's a small business, even the biggest business, even the largest business out there is still a small business. They still have the same issues. It's still cash flow, it's still product availability, it's supply chain, it's people, it's training for everybody. And now we've opened that up. And another thing we think we've opened up, which I'm excited about, is we're talking more, and we're doing more in our committee, for plumbers, carpenters, and welders. We’ve got 100,000 kids in Texas alone who dropped out of school in ninth grade, because they’re losing hope; that's unbelievable, isn’t it? This is in Texas, 100,000 students, and we're gearing more toward especially out of our office and with the SBA, more now toward trade schools. You don't have to go to college. Not everybody has to have a college degree, but if you can be a plumber, a welder, or a carpenter, you make a lot of money. You make it quickly, and quicker than your friends who are going to college who are getting a loan. So we're promoting that. So we take those 100,000 kids who are dropping out in ninth grade and say, ‘no, you're somebody, you're a plumber, a welder, a carpenter,’ you send them school, they hire their friend.

Washington Reporter:

You were already talking about this, but one of the other priorities for small businesses is making permanent the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. How do you feel like that's going legislatively?

Rep. Roger Williams:

I think it's good. We’ve got to do it. Why haven’t we already done it? We came out with a program out of the House, which was great, versus the Senate, they dragged their feet a little bit. So here we are now. I'm hoping, like the Speaker does, that we can have it done by the end of May. There's some who say by the Fourth of July, that's fine, get it done. But I'm just telling you, Main Street America is not talking tariffs. Main Street America is talking about tax cuts. They want more money in their pockets. That employee wants more money. I, as an employer ,want it because it cuts payroll taxes. The other thing that it does is that it allows 100 percent expensing, which is huge, where you buy equipment and write it off the year you buy it, that's a huge deal and so forth. So we gotta get it done. So I'm gonna say, for the purpose of putting it on the record, we'll get it done by the end of May.

Washington Reporter:

And then that was my last policy question. I’ve got to ask, though, how are you feeling about the Congressional Baseball Game this year? I did some scouting. Mike Levin said the Democrats’ team is ‘horrendous,’ so that should make you feel good, but how are you feeling?

Rep. Roger Williams:

I don't worry about them. That's who we gotta play, but we're really good. We're even better than we were last year, and we scored 31 runs last year.

Washington Reporter:

Who has been surprising to you on your team as you’ve been practicing?

Rep. Roger Williams:

Well, we don't have too many first year guys, we’ve got a lot of veteran players involved. We've got Martin Stutzman, who's gonna be a good utility player. He was gone from Congress for eight years, but he can play pretty good. We’ve got the same guys we had last year, and we're going to throw strikes, we're going to keep the ball in front of us. We're going to put the ball in play. We scored 31 runs last year. What I want to do is keep them from scoring. We're going to score. I want to keep them from scoring.

Washington Reporter:

We'll have to do a different interview about how you compare that to legislating. And then my final question is, what is your favorite small business in Texas’s 25th District.

Rep. Roger Williams:

My business: Roger Williams Auto Mall.

Washington Reporter:

What's your second favorite small business in your district?

Rep. Roger Williams:

I like to go to Major League Baseball games with the Texas Rangers, and that's in my district. The Cowboys are also in my district. Everyone likes to go watch the Rangers and the Cowboys. But it’s also about the other small businesses. It's the fellow who has the donut store and opens up at 5:30 in the morning to take care of people going to work. It's the oil industry. They're rolling dice every single day. The Medal of Honor Museum also just opened in Arlington, Texas, and that is well worth a visit too.