Obama to Create Small Business Lending Fund
Today, President Barack Obama is formally unveiling a spate of initiatives to improve hiring at and bolster lending to small businesses, pushing again for a
Jul 31, 20208.3K Shares309.8K Views
Today, President Barack Obama is formally unveiling a spate of initiatives to improve hiring at and bolster lending to small businesses, pushing again for a priority first announced last winter.
The centerpiece is the new $30 billion Small Business Lending Fund, which will offer funding to small community banks. (It will be separate from a similar one housed in the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program.) Other initiatives include nixing capital-gains taxes for small-business investment and increasing the cap on certain Small Business Administration-backed loans.
Details after the jump:
Obama will discuss the plan and urge congressional action today at an 11:30am event honoring small-business owners at the White House. Thus far, the administration’s efforts to ease the gloomy economic picture for small businesses have sputtered, with an oversight panel dryly noting,“it is not clear that [TARP has] had any significant impact on small business lending” at all. Small businesses — which tend to be much more risky to lend to, but have created around two-thirds of new jobs in the past decade, remain hobbledby frozen credit markets.
The initiatives, held in the Small Business Lending Fund Act, passed out of the House Financial Services Committee last week. (View the committee’s markup here.) And with the bill low-cost and supporting the country’s small businesses one of the most unassailable congressional priorities, it should pass the House soon.
“This shouldn’t be a partisan issue. This shouldn’t be an issue of big government versus small government,” Obama plans to say. “This is an issue of putting our government on the side of the small business owners who create most of the jobs in this country.”
Still, the best thing for small businesses would be an improved economic picture overall. Until demand ticks back up, businesses hire more people and Americans start spending, there is only so much the White House can do.
Paula M. Graham
Reviewer
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