President Obama is accusing Senate Republicans of harming the U.S. economy by blocking a bill to aid small business. He said the measure should be the Senate's "first order of business" when it returns Sept. 13 from its summer recess.
President Obama:
Here’s what’s happening: Up until a few months ago, SBA was able to waive the fees for SBA loan borrowers. This allowed small business owners to put more money back into their business. . .
At the same time, we were able to increase the government guarantee on SBA loans, to encourage more banks and credit unions to go ahead and make SBA loans to good, creditworthy small businesses.
This worked. SBA lenders approved about 70,000 SBA Recovery loans for small businesses since the Recovery Act passed, nearly $30 billion in total. And, we brought more than 1,300 lenders back to making SBA loans at a time when other banks were cutting back their small business lending.
Unfortunately, the funding for these popular enhancements ran out at the end of May . . .With support in Congress for extending these successful loan enhancements, we started the Recovery Loan Queue, a stand-by list just like at the airport.
Today, that list is at nearly 1,000 small businesses long . . . With the passage of the Small Business Jobs Act, SBA will be able to fund these loans. Additionally, among other programs, the Act will create the Small Business Lending Fund to provide additional capital to small, community banks so they can boost their lending to small businesses locally.
Some Republicans objected to the loan fund. Some supported the bill but objected to limits that Democrats put on amendments.
How typical. The party that chants about "small business" blocking a program that helps those very businesses, for political gain.
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