Post from Erica Sagrans's Blog: Creating Jobs by Helping Small Businesses Hire Again

Community Blogs Login | Register | Search Blogs Post from Erica Sagrans's Blog: Creating Jobs by Helping Small Businesses Hire Again By Erica Sagrans - May 13, 2010 6:07:05 PM ET As President Obama often says, government itself is not what drives job creation—it is businesses like the one the President visited today in Buffalo, New York that are the engine for our economic growth. But government has an important role to play in creating the conditions that allow companies to hire new workers, and the Obama Administration has taken steps to help small businesses get back on their feet.

After visiting Industrial Support Inc., a manufacturing company that constructs salad bars and supermarket displays, President Obama spoke on what he's doing to support small businesses recover and keep growing:

All across America, we’ve taken steps like these to help companies grow and add jobs.  Last year we enacted seven tax cuts for America’s small businesses, as well as what we call the Making Work Pay tax credit that goes to the vast majority of small business owners.  So, so far, the Recovery Act has supported over 63,000 loans to small businesses—that’s more than $26 billion in new lending.  More than 1,200 banks and credit unions that had stopped issuing SBA loans when the financial crisis hit are lending again today.  More than $7.5 billion in federal Recovery Act contracts are now going to small businesses.

Right now, a series of additional tax incentives and other steps to promote hiring are going to take effect.  Because of a bill that I signed into law a few weeks ago, businesses are now eligible for tax cuts for hiring unemployed workers.  Companies are able to write off more of their investments in new equipment.  And as part of health care reform, 4 million small businesses recently received a postcard in their mailbox telling them that they could be eligible for a health care tax cut this year.  That’s worth maybe tens of thousands of dollars for some companies.  And it’s going to provide welcome relief to small business owners, who too often have to choose between health care and hiring....

That's our small business agenda.  That’s our jobs agenda—empowering small businesses so they can hire.  I hear a lot of noise from some of our friends out there that say, this is nothing more than “big government.”  I want everybody here to understand, I don't—I personally don't think that giving tax cuts to businesses is big government.  I don’t understand how helping businesses get loans so they can grow and hire more workers is big government.

I’m not interested in another debate about big government versus small government.  I care about whether government is meeting its responsibilities to the people it represents.  And I want to unleash the great power of our economy, so Americans who are looking for work can find it.  And I'm hopeful that our small business agenda doesn’t fall victim to the same partisanship that we’ve seen over the last year.  Helping businesses to create jobs should be something that both parties can agree to.

The President made it clear that while we’ve seen encouraging signs that the economy is heading toward recovery, he will continue making job creation his top priority until workers and small businesses are back on their feet.

Take a look at this chart from the White House showing recent job gains compared with previous job losses:/p>