Happy Birthday Small Business Jobs Act

From the U.S. Senate Office of Mary Landrieu

27   Sep. 13   Small Business Jobs Act Turns Three Dear Small Business Advocate, Three years ago today, the Small Business Jobs Act became law.  As Chair of the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, I am proud to have led this bipartisan effort to help America’s small business recover from The Great Recession.   The Small Business Jobs Act added billions of dollars of lending and investment to America’s entrepreneurs and provided $12 billion in tax relief to small businesses from coast to coast.                  (Press Conference in support of the Small Business Jobs Act, Sept. 2010)                                                 -Watch video- When I took over as Chair of this Committee in January 2009, our country was facing the worst economic recession since the Great Depression.  The U.S. economy lost 818,000 jobs that month alone.  From September 2008 through the end of 2009, the Great Recession wiped out 7 million American jobs.   In the face of tightening credit markets and insufficient resources to assist them, small businesses were struggling to keep their doors open; and the primary agency responsible for assisting them was itself struggling to keep up with demand after suffering significant budget cuts in the previous years.   The Small Business Jobs Act got small businesses in Louisiana, and across the nation, the help they need, ensuring they maintained their historic role as job creators and innovators spurring economic recovery.   Since the passage of the Small Business Jobs Act: --The Small Business Administration (SBA) supported approximately $60 billion in lending over the past two years, which were the two highest SBA lending years on record. --SBA has refinanced 2,424 small business commercial mortgages, totaling almost $2.3 billion in volume through the 504 commercial mortgage refinance program.  This helped contribute to the highest 504 lending year of all time which supported over $15 billion in small business lending. ---SBA successfully rolled out the first round of State Trade and Export Promotion (STEP) grants in September 2011 to 47 states and four territories, totaling $30 million.  STEP grants maximize the federal-state-local resources to help small businesses export so they can grow their business and create jobs.  The STEP program assisted more than 2,000 small businesses begin exporting or increase their current export success. Sincerely, Mary Laundrieu Please contact Sen. Landrieu at the office nearest you.

www.landrieu.senate.gov

ACTION ALERT!!!

Access to Capital vote on Tuesday
Tell Graham and DeMint to do it the right way

The U.S. Senate will vote tomorrow (March 20^th) on legislation to create another path for small businesses to access capital.  The Small Business Chamber has supported the idea of allowing limited investments in small businesses with relatively low caps on total investments sought.  This is called “crowdfunding”.  In exchange for limited investment caps, the Security and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) normal requirements would be reduced to eliminate much of the cost and time for compliance that prohibits most small businesses from accessing investment capital.

However, “crowdfunding” legislation done properly is a careful balance between reducing investor risk through low investment caps and thus lowering SEC oversight.  We have worked with a bi-partisan group of Senators to achieve this balance.   Unfortunately, the U.S. House has passed and sent to the Senate legislation (JOBS Act) that includes a “crowdfunding” provision that throws this careful balance out the window and will bring the greed and fraud on Wall Street that gave us the Great Recession to Main Street investments.  

Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana has characterizes the vote tomorrow this way.  ““There's a right way to get capital in the hands of small businesses and a wrong way.  If we take the wrong path and fall off of a cliff, we are going to ruin our chances to get this done.” 

Please contact S.C. Senators Graham and DeMint quickly.  Below are two easy ways to do this.  Your message should be twofold:

Vote YES for cloture on Reed-Landrieu-Levin’s Substitute Amendment to the JOBS Act.

If Reed-Landrieu-Levin fails, Vote NO for cloture on the House Bill (H.R. 3606)

The first vote would substitute the Senate INVEST Act that includes our crowdfunding provision for the JOBS Act.  The latter vote will insure more debate and amendments to the JOBS Act so that we “don’t fall off of a cliff”.

Send your message to our Senators in an email letter provided by the American Sustainable Business Council.  Click here to send email.

Or call both our Senators and give the above message.

Senator Jim DeMint 
202-224-6121

Senator  Lindsey Graham 
202-224-5972

Thanks for your help.