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The Politics Behind Obama's Small Business Plan
By Marc Tracy
Robb Mandelbaum takes a look at the politics surrounding President Obama's new small business lending proposals. As we noted at the time, some of these proposals--most prominently, raising the ceiling on Small Business Administration-backed loans from $2 million to $5 million--will require new federal legislation, with all the committee-jumping and jockeying among both houses of Congress that such a thing entails.
A bill already exists: Obama, without exactly saying so, was effectively putting his weight behind a bill that came from Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Me.), who is BizBox's favorite senator, and, given her recent support for the Baucus health-care bill in the Finance Committee, is surely among the administration's as well (a fact that is far from coincidental when it comes to Obama's support). Snowe is the ranking member of the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Committee. Its chairwoman, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), has her own bill, subsequent to Snowe's, which would raise the loan ceiling and also extend the 90% guarantee granted in last February's stimulus, which was scheduled to phase out.
In the House, on the other hand, the small business committee's ranking member, Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.), is against Snowe's bill. More intriguingly, and more troublingly so far as the bill's chances go, the chairwoman, Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.--if you live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, she's your congresswoman), has also expressed a certain cautious skepticism: "Duplicating existing programs or instilling initiatives that only benefit the lenders does nothing to help grow our economy," she argued. (Not a bad point, frankly!)
Politics is the art of the possible. Are Obama's proposals possible? Stay tuned ...
Comments (0)October 27, 2009 9:32 AM
