Toomey's Take: The JOBS Act: A Success Story

When I travel across my home state I hear the same refrain from constituents: "Why can't you guys in Washington work together? Why can't you get something done?"

I'm here to deliver some good news: I've worked with my Republican and Democratic colleagues to pass a genuine jobs bill that will help Pennsylvania companies grow and create the jobs we desperately need.

The appropriately titled JOBS Act contains six pieces of legislation, three of which I wrote with my Democratic colleagues. All are geared toward helping our small and medium-sized businesses raise the capital they need to expand, develop new products and hire new workers.

For example, Wawa is a familiar landmark in eastern Pennsylvania. Many of us have stopped at one of their stations to fill up our cars or to grab a quick (and delicious) sandwich. Currently, Wawa employs 8,000 people in Pennsylvania and keeps on growing.

For Wawa, remaining a private company is a necessary part of its corporate DNA and a very important component of its success story. In order to continue expanding, Wawa needs to focus its resources on building stores, rather than using its capital for unnecessary costs associated with remaining private. Unfortunately, the archaic regulations on the books set the shareholder limit for private companies at 500 and would force Wawa to expend precious capital to reduce its number of shareholders instead of focusing on growth. Increasing the shareholder limits allows Wawa to remain private, build more stores and continue to create jobs, while at the same time sharing ownership with its associates.

This is all the more important because so many Pennsylvania companies give their employees stock ownership in their companies. This means these companies will hit the current, archaic shareholder limit that much faster. To rectify this problem, I co-sponsored legislation with Democratic Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware that lifts the shareholder limit to 2,000 and excludes employees from that count.

This legislation became part of the JOBS Act that passed the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support and that President Obama signed into law this month. Now companies can raise the capital they need to expand, hire new workers and give those employees ownership in the company without triggering a regulatory nightmare.

In addition, the JOBS Act helps growing companies that want to go public but are concerned about the cost of complying with a growing list of regulations. It used to take businesses four and a half years to grow large enough to go public. Now, it takes a company nine years on average. This is due, in part, to the growing list of expensive regulations created by the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley law. As a result, fewer companies are choosing to go public, and the number of initial public offerings filed has decreased dramatically in the past decade.

Consider the case of Saladax Medical, a small but growing company in Bethlehem that manufactures tests for cancer and Alzheimer's patients. Going public would allow Saladax to continue to grow, hire new workers and develop more life-saving diagnostic tests.

But the current regulatory regime makes it too expensive and time-consuming for Saladax and other companies to justify the process. That's why I introduced legislation with Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer of New York that eases the costliest regulations for growing companies for up to five years. This legislation, too, was included in the JOBS Act and is now law.

Because of the JOBS Act, hundreds - if not thousands of companies - will be able to access the capital they need to grow. All because Congress put its differences aside and worked together.

I understand people's frustrations with Washington. I came to Washington a year and a half ago to make a difference in the lives of my constituents - to put our government on a fiscally responsible path and to eliminate the most onerous regulations that are hampering job creation in our country. What I found instead was partisan gridlock and an environment averse to bipartisanship.

But through many months of conversations with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, I found Democrats willing to work with me on legislation that would truly help our economy grow.

Some will say this accomplishment is a fluke. I hope not. There is still much work to be done to solve our deficits problem and to create jobs. And I plan on doing as much I can to continue making progress.