Finance, Technical Asistance Bills Up For Votes
Nov 16th, 2009 | By Dawn R. Rivers | Category: Policy MattersCongress returns from its brief Veterans Day break this week and will leave town again next week for Thanksgiving. One of the things expected to happen during this particular flying visit to Capitol Hill between District Work Periods is a vote in the House on a fistful of small business related bills. Three of them seek to improve and enhance the SBA’s entrepreneurial development programs, through consistent and uniform data collection, using technology to improve outreach efforts, coordinating disparate federal resources and more. All three of these bills were introduced this past April Fool’s Day — which, I feel certain, was a coincidence.
There are also two bills focusing on SBA financing programs. One would authorize the SBA Administrator to authorize a 90% loan guarantee for investments in health information technology purchased or installed by small health care service providers. The other would establish a small business early-stage investment program, via the Small Business Investment Company program, for funding firms in specific industries, including agriculture, energy, environmental, defense and information technologies, life science and digital media. Of all these, the bills that will be felt by the largest number of microbusinesses will be the busienss management training items. All of these bills are expected to pass the full House fairly painlessly.
