Republicans Block Small Business Lending Bill

(AP)  Senate Republicans blocked a bill to increase small business lending Thursday, dealing a setback to President Barack Obama's jobs agenda.

The bill would create a $30 billion government fund to help community banks increase lending to small businesses, combining it with about $12 billion in tax breaks aimed at small businesses. Democrats say banks should be able to use the lending fund to leverage up to $300 billion in loans to small businesses, helping to loosen tight credit markets.

The fund would be available only to banks with less than $10 billion in assets. Some Republicans, however, likened it to the unpopular bailout of the financial industry.

Senate leaders said they will continue to negotiate amendments to the bill. But Thursday's vote will make it difficult for Congress to pass it before lawmakers go on summer vacation. The Senate is in session for another week; the House is scheduled to adjourn Friday.

Congressional Democrats started the year with ambitious plans to pass a series of bills designed to create jobs. But if negotiations on the small business lending bill fail, they will have little to show for it just a few months before midterm elections that will determine whether Democrats keep their majorities in the House and Senate.

Congress has extended unemployment benefits for people who have been out of work for long stretches and passed a measure that gives tax breaks to businesses that hire unemployed workers. But many other initiatives stalled, in part because of concerns they would add to the growing national debt.

Obama lobbied for the small business lending bill during a trip Wednesday to Edison, N.J. But Senate Democrats fell short of the necessary 60 votes Thursday to end a Republican filibuster.

The vote was 58 to 42, with all 41 Republicans voting to continue the filibuster. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., also voted to continue the filibuster, but only as a procedural step that allows him to call up the bill again.

Much of the bill had bipartisan support, but Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Democrats were blocking GOP amendments. Reid said Republican demands kept changing.

"It takes a lot of effort to make a partisan issue out of a bill that should have broad bipartisan support," McConnell said. "But our friends on the other side have managed to pull it off. They've outdone themselves."

Reid said he offered to hold votes on some Republican amendments, only to see the list of GOP demands grow.

"They wanted to offer amendments. I've agreed to offer amendments," Reid said. "There's nothing snarled, there's only an effort to stop passage of this bill."

GOP amendments included measures to beef up border security, impose a government spending cap and lower the estate tax, which is scheduled to return next year with a top rate of 55 percent on estates larger than $1 million.

One Republican amendment would repeal a new tax reporting requirement for businesses that was included in the massive health care overhaul enacted last spring.

Democrats, meanwhile, have added about $1.5 billion in disaster relief for farmers who lost crops in 2009, a measure sponsored by Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark.

Democrats also wanted to add an amendment to settle long-running class-action lawsuits brought by black farmers and American Indians.

One lawsuit concerned the government's management and accounting of more than 300,000 trust accounts of American Indians. The other is a discrimination lawsuit brought by black farmers against the Agriculture Department. The cost of settling them both: about $4.6 billion.

The small business tax cuts in the bill include breaks for restaurant owners and retailers who remodel their stores or build new ones. Other businesses could more quickly recover the costs of capital improvements through depreciation. Long-term investors in some small businesses would be exempt from paying capital gains taxes.

Much of the bill would be paid for by allowing taxpayers to convert 401(k) and government retirement accounts into Roth accounts, in which they pay taxes up front on the money they contribute, enabling them to withdraw it tax-free after they retire. Taxpayers who convert accounts this year would pay the taxes in 2011 and 2012, generating an estimated $5.1 billion.

[RobAla]

I am not a member of any political party, as I am an independent. However, this position by the President is almost laughable.

Maybe the article should read: "President Obama for 18 months has blocked anything to enable private business to rise up off the floor, while expanding the federal government at the expense of business and American taxpayers".

The President's health care bill, adds burden on both business and most Americans.
The cap and trade bill kills American jobs.
Climate change legislation kills American jobs.
Allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, redirects money away from the economy and into the pockets of Washington. People with money (rich or not) invest, allowing money to be available for business to borrow and expand. People with money, spend it - feeding business - and aiding to employment. This week the President said that he projects that unemployment will remain about 9% into the year 2012. This is unacceptable. His focus should be cutting government and creating an environment where business can begin hiring again. However, his sole focus is on being about his precious extremist agenda. he doesn't give a rats behind about the unemployed. If he did, he would have never made such a statement about unemployment - he would have never said that he doesn't watch the stock market, that it was like watching a political poll (when people lost $millions of life savings in 2009), and he would not be promoting job killing business hurting legislation and actions.

For the President to act as if it is the Republicans who are against small business (while he is supposedly for it), is absolutely an arrogant lie! What a hypocrite!!!! He has been killing private business and expanding the federal government ever since he has been in office. I have had it with his BS!

[kansas1946]

(AP) Senate Republicans blocked a bill to increase small business lending Thursday, dealing a setback to President Barack Obama's jobs agenda.

The bill would create a $30 billion government fund to help community banks increase lending to small businesses, combining it with about $12 billion in tax breaks aimed at small businesses. Democrats say banks should be able to use the lending fund to leverage up to $300 billion in loans to small businesses, helping to loosen tight credit markets
***********************************

Of course, according to the tea-baggers, Obama would be the death of small businesses. Looks like the tea-bagger Republicans are going to be the death of small businesses. The ONLY reason they are blocking this bill is because Obama proposed it. They are evil, unpatriotic, liars, and slime balls. Anyone who would associate themselves with the current Republican party just has to be sick, stupid, or both.

[cmdegolier]

The reason they are blocking it because it will cost us taxpayers another $30 billion. Why can't banks lend money on their own, is that not what they do. And why is farming the only business that gets paid by the government when the season is bad and to not farm.

[texbelle123]

you thought the stimulus was working?

Why? When the republicans block everything they can, do you blame the domocrats?

[us_1776]

The Republicans are all about big corporations. The small business doesn't ever get any real help from the GOP. And we see it once again.




.

[starleo146]

Yes but for months they were screaming give small business a tax cut, what is the problem now, they do not know how to say yea.

[stormerF3]

Why do we need this I thought the Stimulis was working? Obama and Biden are always saying the Economy is going great,so why do we need this? When the Bush tax breaks end there will be all this money coming in from small business owners and individuals who make over $200,000.00. Exculde the rich and it is 1.4 trillion over 10 years twice what the rich will pay at 700 billion over 10 years.

[omega42]

Well gee stormy, you're absolutely right. The economy is going gangbusters. I guess there isn't any need to extend those Bush taxcuts then, I mean since the economy is humming along and everything...