the economy. we re looking ahead to identify and address challenges facing small businesses that will be important to overcome to build a competitive economy. in march, treasury co-hosted a party that had business leaders and academics to draw additional attention troubles facing small businesses, reducing barriers to their success and find new ways for the private and public sector to work together. with that, let me thank you again for the opportunity to be here today and reiterate how appreciative i am of this committee s work and the commitment to america s small business. i m happy to answer any questions you may have. thank you very much. we ll have a first round of questions by the members. we ve been joined by senator cardin from maryland. we appreciate him being with us this morning. before i want to get into the questions, i want to submit things for the record that i found quite encouraging. one is a document i received about a couple of weeks ago from the vistag