We were able in the Recovery Act to get a program where we increased our loan guarantees to 90 percent. Because we had that program, a bank wouldn't have to take that much risk.

The 2009 stimulus law got the ball rolling, allowing the agency to reduce and eliminate fees and raise loan guarantees to 90 percent of the total. I knew that we had the opportunity to use S.B.A. products to fill that gap in a rapid manner, as we ended up doing in the Recovery Act.

We are very much engaged across the government, very much engaged in streamlining and simplifying our activities with borrowers and lenders, because that saves time and saves costs and we believe we can do that while maintaining the same or increased levels of oversight and risk management.

Small businesses pay 18 percent more than big businesses for health care, the same health care, just because they're small and they have too small a pool of risk.

We really accomplished what we set out to do with the Recovery Act programs, which was to fill the lending gap created by the crisis.

Relationships are where we take our recovery on the road.