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Cohen Votes to Support Legislation to Help Small Businesses Grow and Create Jobs

June 17, 2010

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Steve Cohen (D-TN) today voted to support the Small Business Lending Fund Act (H.R. 5297) – legislation that would help small businesses grow and create jobs.

“Small businesses are the backbone of our economy,” said Cohen. “Small businesses have generated more than 60 percent of new jobs during the past 15 years. Supporting small businesses will help us create jobs during one of our country’s most tough economic times.”

The measure authorizes $30 billion for a new fund through which the U.S. Treasury Department could make investments in certain financial institutions, such as community banks, to encourage those institutions to make credit available for small businesses.

The measure creates a separate State Small Business Credit Initiative, for which $2 billion would be authorized, that would assist state and municipal programs that aim to increase access to capital for small businesses, and it authorizes $1 billion for a Small Business Administration program to make investments in “early stage” small businesses in certain targeted industries.

There are two sections in the bill that would assist minority and women owned businesses. The first provision requires recipients of small business lending funds to provide outreach and advertising to minority communities about the availability of small business loans. The second would require the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury to conduct a study on the number of women and minority owned businesses that receive assistance from small business lending funds and report those findings to Congress.

Under a special rule, this bill will be joined with H.R. 5486, which contains tax incentives aimed at small businesses, including a provision to exclude from taxation 100 percent of the capital gains from the sales of certain small business stock held for at least five years.