The National Small Business Association (NSBA) is calling on lawmakers to include key small-business provisions in any economic stimulus bill. Small-business economic outlook is at an all-time low, according to a recent NSBA survey which will be released next week as part of NSBA’s 2008 Year-End Economic Report.
“Small business is the key to economic recovery, creating 93.5 percent of all net new jobs in the last 20 years. Yet throughout the economic slowdown and recession, small business continues to be hit with increasing difficulty accessing capital, wildly volatile credit card rates and terms, and plummeting numbers of loans made in the SBA 7(a) loan program for the first quarter of 2009, down 57 percent from the same period in 2008,” stated NSBA president Todd O. McCracken.
To address these problems and to work as a partner with Congress and the administration on providing real solutions to small business, NSBA has outlined a number of key proposals that stand to greatly help the small-business community. Among those proposals are:
• Expanding SBA lending, particularly by eliminating the borrower and lender fees associated with the 7(a) and 504 programs and increasing the government guarantee;
• Requiring banks that receive any future TARP funding to dedicate at least 25 percent of those funds to expand their small-business lending and utilizing $3 billion of Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) funds to purchase 7(a) pooled securities, which already are guaranteed by the federal government to address lockdown of the secondary market.
• Mandating that 23 percent of any infrastructure stimulus funds, whether spent at the federal, state or local level, be contracted out to small businesses and repealing the 3 percent withholding requirement.
• Abolishing the self-employment tax on health insurance, making the tax code fairer and granting more than 21 million entrepreneurs greater access to affordable health insurance.
• Extending the net operating loss (NOL) carry back rules from two to five years for losses suffered in 2007, 2008, and 2009; and
• Reauthorizing the Small Business Innovation Research program and providing an additional $2.3 billion for small-business research and development and commercialization funding in FY 2009.
“As each member of Congress participates in a swearing-in process today, I implore them not to forget about the folks back home, the small-business owners who are counting on them,” stated NSBA chair Keith Ashmus. “We deserve better than another taxpayer-funded bailout that does nothing for the true creators of American job growth.”
Since 1937, NSBA has advocated on behalf of America’s entrepreneurs. A nonpartisan organization, NSBA reaches more than 150,000 small businesses nationwide and is proud to be the nation’s first small-business advocacy organization. For more information, visit www.nsba.biz.
For more information and greater details on NSBA’s Economic Stimulus proposals, please click here: <.” target=”_blank”>http://www.mmsend3.com/ls.cfm?r=146527546&sid=5546662&m=635151&u=NSBU1&s=http://www.nsba.biz/docs/Stimulus_Proposal.pdf>.
