Kerry Prods Treasury, SBA To Help Small Firms
Nov 24th, 2008 | By Dawn R. Rivers | Category: Politics & PolicyTo say that Senator John Kerry (D-MA), chairman of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, has long been concerned about the impacts of the credit markets on small businesses is a bit of an understatement. In fact, Chairman Kerry and his counterpart, Committee Ranking Member Olympia Snowe (R- ME), have been pressing the SBA for some kind of action on small business lending for most of the year.
The SBA recently announced that it has take steps to improve the position of SBA-backed loans on the secondary market in order to improve liquidity for banks to make more loans to small firms — but, of course, Senator Kerry’s pushing had nothing to do with it. Meanwhile, Kerry has enlisted the support of Joint Economic Committee Chairman Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to push legislation that would temporarily eliminate borrower and lender fees on 7(a) loans. The two lawmakers announced last week that the bill would be incorporated into a Senate stimulus package and, along with Senator Snowe, sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Paulson urging his to use some of that $700 billion bailout money to buy back securitized SBA loans — again, to improve liquidity. No doubt Senator Kerry is optimistic about his ability to work on this stuff with the incoming Administration but, for the many small firms struggling right now without access to capital, January is simply too far away.
