Supporting Small Businesses and Infrastructure
This week, the House passed the Small Business and Infrastructure Jobs Act, a bill designed to create and sustain jobs through bolstering small businesses and supporting infrastructure projects. Small businesses generate 60 percent of new jobs in this country. After the economic recession in the early 1990’s, 3.8 million jobs were created by small businesses, outpacing job growth by large businesses by 500,000 jobs. In our struggling economy, the best thing Congress can do is help small businesses grow and create more new jobs. Up until now, they have been hindered by a lack of access to capital. This bill helps give them access to the resources they need.
Among other provisions, the Small Business and Infrastructure Jobs Act encourages investment in small businesses by increasing capital gains tax cuts for small businesses investors. It also extends Build America Bonds that fund state and local governments in their efforts to rebuild infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, and sewer systems. The legislation is compliant with Pay-As-You-Go budget rules, and was fully paid for by closing a tax loophole that allowed foreign corporations to dodge U.S. tax laws, thereby gaining unfair advantages over U.S. companies.
Ensuring Disaster Relief Capability
This week, we also passed H.R. 4899, the Disaster Relief and Summer Jobs Act of 2010. The bill provides essential funds to FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, for relief for disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the recent floods in the Midwest. It also dedicates $600 million to Labor Department grants given to states to fund summer jobs programs for young people, as well as provides $60 million to the Small Businesses Administration to continue current government guarantees for small-business loans at 90 percent (up from 75%) through the end of April. To offset the spending, the bill withdraws $620 million in unused funding previously committed to other projects.
Taking another important step towards a fiscally responsible government
This week, a number of my fellow Blue Dogs continued our efforts for fiscal reform by introducing new legislation that will require the President and Congress to work together to address duplicative, obsolete, and inefficient spending. I am proud to cosponsor the Budget Enforcement Legislation Tool “BELT” Act of 2010 which brings back a bipartisan budgetary tool that was used in the 1990’s to expose and eliminate wasteful and/or unnecessary spending. Specifically, the BELT Act gives the President up to three days after signing a funding bill to list proposed cuts and submit them to Congress. Congress will then have an up or down vote on each of the cuts. This process, known as “expedited rescission,” allows the federal government to work in a collaborative manner to trim down wasteful spending.
This month, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported that the deficit for Fiscal Year 2010 is a staggering $1.5 trillion, 10.3 percent of the gross domestic product. This figure, as a percentage of the economy, is the highest since the end of World War II. The analysis by CBO projected the cumulative deficit over the next decade to be $9.8 trillion. I continue to work with other members of the Blue Dog Coalition to push this and similar measures to address our growing national deficit and promote fiscal responsibility so that future generations will not have to pay the bills tomorrow for what the government does today.
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