As amazing as it may seem in a Washington that often seems collectively afflicted with ADHD, the Obama Administration spent the entire week last week talking about small businesses. And it’s not even Small Business Week! Evidently, when the President said his renewed focus on job creation would start with small business, he meant it. Not that there was anything startlingly new or innovative in the proposals we heard last week. So far, the White House prescription for incentivizing job growth consists of tax cuts, tax credits and more lending. Administration officials started the week talking about the President’s plan to transfer $30 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program into a separate Small Business Loan Fund that would be used to invest in small and community banks, upon terms that will create strong incentives to increase small business lending.

In addition, on the lending front, there were a few other tweaks announced, such as extending the Recovery Act provisions that eliminate fees and raises the guarantee on some SBA loans and raising the cap on SBA Express loans to $1 million. On the tax front, there’s the tax cut for creating new jobs and the temporary payroll tax break for wage increases in excess of inflation. There are also extensions of increased expensing and bonus depreciation provisions, and the proposal to eliminate capital gains taxes on investments in small business stock. Some of this might be helpful for some microbusinesses but, of course, the Administration is only interested in helping small businesses that create jobs. Given that microbusinesses generate income but not necessarily jobs, there’s not much point in looking to the feds for more broadly based support at this time.