All Americans—regardless of race, gender, or background—deserve the opportunity to earn a secure middle-class life. That value is the core of Senator Coons’ economic vision. Senator Coons supports a variety of strategies that create more American jobs, help workers find pathways to those jobs, and that improve the pay and benefits offered to American workers.
Small business and entrepreneurship. Critical to American job creation is the ability of Americans to translate an idea into a business. As a member of the Senate Small Business Committee, Senator Coons supports the Small Business Administration (SBA) and the highly successful Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE) program, which helps make capital and talent available to entrepreneurs.
Closing the skills gap. While American workers are creative, industrious risk-takers, and among the world’s most productive, many lack the education and skills needed to secure high-paying jobs in the fast-paced, technology-intensive global economy that has evolved in the United States. Senator Coons supports apprenticeships as an important tool for connecting American workers to good-paying jobs. He introduced the Apprenticeship Hubs Across America Act to establish a new initiative to grow and expand highly successful organizations that help employers design and deliver registered apprenticeship programs—for displaced workers looking to pursue new careers and for high school graduates seeking employment upon graduation.
Financial services. Representing tens of thousands of financial services workers in Delaware, Senator Coons believes we must work together to improve Wall Street reforms where we can, rather than reverse the progress we have made. He supports strong banking consumer protections and has secured legislation to provide free credit monitoring for all active duty service members and a permanent yearlong prohibition on foreclosure on servicemembers returning from active duty.
Through his role on the Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Coons also supports the Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund to promote economic and community development in low-income communities. Delaware CDFI’s like First State Community Loan Foundation and NCALL are some of the most important sources of capital for minority, women, and veteran owned early stage companies in Delaware.