RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — Vice President Kamala Harris paid a visit to Richmond on Thursday to highlight Small Business Week and spoke with 8News in an exclusive, one-on-one interview at Babylon Micro-Farms in Scott’s Addition.
The hydroponic grower served as the backdrop for the vice president’s trip to the River City, as it was the recipient of a $150,000 equity investment from the Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation (VIPC), supported by the State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI) under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). Touring the Richmond facility, Vice President Harris used the visit as an opportunity to tout the Biden-Harris Administration’s investment in small businesses.
“When I was a United State Senator, we helped secure $12 billion for community banks, and so far, our administration has distributed nearly $11 billion of that investment to small businesses across our nation,” Harris said Thursday, speaking before a crowd at Babylon Micro-Farms. “An example here in Richmond is we’ve invested $250,000 to help Let’s Be A Kid Family Daycare hire more staff. We invested more than $270,000 to help D & H Construction Services move into a new office.”
The vice president also noted that America’s small businesses employ nearly half of all private sector workers in the country. However, according to data from the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy, more than 80% of small businesses have no employees, only run by a single owner.
“I feel very strongly about supporting our small businesses, our small business owners,” Harris said in an exclusive interview with 8News on Thursday. “They’re leaders in business. But they’re also civic leaders. They’re community leaders. They sponsor the local softball league. They mentor, hire locally, and so they really are a part of what drivers our economy as a whole.”
Data further showed that 16% of U.S. small businesses employ between one and 16 individuals.
“We are particularly proud that we have seen more small business growth under our administration in two years than any other administration has seen before. So, we know that the work that we are doing is actually creating incentives for people who are entrepreneurial, people who have an idea to actually start a business,” the vice president said. “Community banks situated in the community really do understand the needs of the community and therefore the need to support the small businesses in their communities, and so that’s a lot of the work we’re doing, too.”
Data from the U.S. Census Bureau confirmed this information — that more than 10.5 million small businesses have formed since 2021, the highest amount during a two-year period on record, which dates back to 2004.
“So far, the economy is looking very good, in terms of us addressing the concern that people rightly have about the cost of food, the cost of gas, and we’ve been able to address that in a variety of ways,” Harris said. “When President [Joe] Biden and I took office, we vowed to rebuild America’s manufacturing sector, to bring jobs back from overseas, to strengthen our supply chains and to build in America, and we have kept that promise.”
However, according to AAA, the price of gas is not expected to decrease significantly any time soon, although the price for oil had dropped nearly $20 per barrel recently to the upper $60s. Additionally, supply chain issues are anticipated to continue this year, with global financial firm KPMG citing a staggering 71% of companies that named raw material costs as their number-one supply chain threat for 2023. Data did show, though, that U.S. manufacturing growth started outpacing the rest of the world’s growth at the end of 2022 for the first time in recent memory.
8News also asked the vice president about her approval rating, particularly in the context of the recent announcement that both Biden and Harris would be seeking reelection in 2024. As of May 2, polls showed that 41% of registered voters had a favorable opinion of Harris and 53% had an unfavorable opinion.
“What do you say to those voters about the next four years that you’re looking to make these changes?” 8News asked the vice president.
“We are very excited about the next four years because it’s going to be about continuing to do the work to respond to the needs of the American people. People stood in line and waited, sometimes, for hours to vote, and they did so because they wanted to put in their order and they wanted certain things to happen,” she said. “They wanted us to cap insulin at $35 a month, and, because we won, because they voted, we have done that. They said, ‘Cap the cost of annual prescriptions, especially for our seniors because it’s too expensive and they can pay up to tens of thousands of dollars a year,’ and we have now capped it at $2,000.”
The Inflation Reduction Act, under the Biden-Harris Administration, does include a yearly cap of $2,000 in out-of-pocked prescription drug costs in Medicare. However, that legislation does not go into effect until 2025.
“We are now on the path to actually ensuring that all Americans will have access to affordable, high speed Internet,” the vice president said. “We are now on track to getting rid of all lead pipes in our country. So, this is the work that we’ve been doing in response to the demands that people rightly are making. They have a right to expect that their government and leaders see them and hear them, and that’s the work Joe Biden and I have been doing, and we’re going to continue doing it.”
Watch 8News’ full interview with Vice President Harris below.
