Small Business Jobs and Credit Act of 201006

Floor Speech

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Mr. PETERS. I rise today in support of H.R. 5297. Small businesses create two in every three new jobs in this country. Creating an environment that allows small businesses to innovate and grow is the single most important objective necessary to reduce unemployment and lead our Nation to full economic recovery.

I have held a field hearing and roundtables with small business owners and have traveled door-to-door in downtowns in my district, and the one thing that I hear over and over again is many entrepreneurs are ready to invest and create jobs again, but they cannot secure the capital necessary to start or grow their business. Some, like Karen Teegarden, owner of a small advertising firm in Oakland County, told me that because she could not get a simple line of credit to meet some short-term payroll needs, she was forced to lay off workers.

It is no secret why small businesses are struggling. Wall Street banks have admitted that they have reduced their investments in Michigan as well as other States. And small local lenders don't have enough capital to lend. I have been fighting for the past year for action to help solve this problem, and the bill before us today will create a $30 billion fund to promote small business lending. Small local lenders can leverage this funding into $300 billion in loans for small businesses. But because local lenders will pay the investment back with interest, the nonpartisan CBO says the taxpayers will earn a projected $1 billion.

It's not often that a single action can create a multitude of jobs across this country and reduce the deficit at the same time. Enacting this bill will do just that. In Michigan, our manufacturers are struggling particularly hard to get access to credit. As their assets decline in value, they have less collateral to post, and this makes banks less likely to lend to them, even if they can show that they are thriving.

The Michigan Collateral Support Program helps lenders, small manufacturers and the State pool default risk to help these companies secure the capital they need to create new jobs. Thirty States have similar programs, and a provision of this bill that I wrote would allow States to strengthen their existing programs and allow other States to create them.

Washington's top priority must be to help create an environment that allows our small businesses to succeed and to create jobs. This legislation helps one of the primary obstacles facing our small businesses, and passing this bill is critical.

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