Small-business measure goes to Obama for signature

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

The Democratic- controlled Congress on Thursday sent President Barack Obama a long- delayed bill to help struggling small businesses with easier credit and other incentives to expand and hire new workers.

The $40 billion-plus bill is the last vestige of the heralded jobs agenda that Obama and Democrats promoted early this year. They ended up delivering only a fraction of what they promised after emboldened Senate Republicans blocked most of the agenda with filibusters.

The Senate passed the measure last week. The 237-187 House vote Thursday that sent the bill to the president split along party lines as Democrats praised the measure for creating a $30 billion federal fund to help smaller banks issue loans to small businesses and for cutting taxes by $12 billion over the coming decade.

“It combines ... tax relief with increased access to critical financing so that our nation’s small businesses can move forward on new or delayed expansion plans,” said Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine. “Small-business growth means job creation.”

Republicans, poised for big gains in midterm elections just six weeks away, said the new loan fund is just a smaller version of the unpopular 2008 bailout of the financial system.

“What we have today before us is junior TARP,” said Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla.

Though community bankers enthusiastically support the measure, it’s getting only tepid support from GOP-leaning small-business groups, which are more focused on expiring tax cuts.

The vote gives Obama and his Democratic allies on Capitol Hill a much-needed but minor victory as midterm elections approach.

“The small-business jobs bill passed today will help provide loans and cut taxes for millions of small-business owners,” Obama said in a statement. “After months of partisan obstruction and needless delay, I’m grateful that Democrats and a few Republicans came together to support this commonsense plan to put Americans back to work.”