Check out today's Politico op-ed by Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Assistant to the Speaker and Ways and Means Committee Member, on how the President and Democratic Congress are helping small businesses.

Helping small businesses create jobs

By: Rep. Chris Van Hollen

August 27, 2010 

 

When President Barack Obama was sworn into office, our economy was in freefall – we were losing jobs at a rate of 700,000 a month with no end in sight. 

To address the crisis, stem job losses and save our economy from collapse, the new president and Congress took a series of immediate and decisive steps. Despite consistent opposition from congressional Republicans, these measures were passed and stopped our economy’s downward spiral. 

Today we are moving in the right direction – markets have stabilized and we have seen six consecutive months of job growth in the private sector. Still, the pace of job growth is too slow and more remains to be done. Small businesses are likely to drive the next phase of the recovery – they are our engines of economic growth. So Democrats are going to continue to make the needs of small business owners a priority. 

Working with the Small Business Administration, we’ve helped drive 29 percent of Recovery Act contracts from the stimulus to small business owners, who have a proven track record of creating jobs. Recovery Act grants have proved a lifeline for small businesses. 

I’ve heard it firsthand, from constituents like Stephen Hoffman, chief executive officer of Sanaria, who has been able to keep employees and focus on creating a malaria vaccine that could save millions of lives. Sanaria is just one of thousands of small businesses across the country helped by this legislation. 

The Recovery Act stands to ultimately offer $30 billion in new contracting opportunities to small companies. Passing the Recovery Act in February 2009 – which gave 95 percent of working families historic tax cuts and small businesses $15 billion in tax incentives – was just the first step of this Congress to stabilize the economy. 

Access to capital is key to small businesses growing and hiring new employees. That is why the House passed legislation like the Small Business Jobs and Credit Act and the Small Business Jobs Tax Relief Act – bills that will give billions in private sector lending opportunities and lower taxes so entrepreneurs can attract capital and launch new companies. 

Unfortunately, Senate Republicans are using procedural tactics to block these pro-growth initiatives. Both bills deserve an immediate up or down vote. 

The HIRE Act also supports small businesses. It gives a payroll tax holiday to employers who hire people unemployed for more than 60 days. This law is expected to help businesses hire 300,000 workers. HIRE also funds a variety of projects that should ultimately allow small businesses to expand.

In addition, new legislation to prevent hundreds of thousands of teachers, firefighters and police officers from being fired, keeps teachers in classrooms, cops on the beat and their families above water. This important investment in our communities, which helps our recovery, was fully paid for, in part, by closing a perverse tax loophole that rewards large corporations that ship U.S. jobs -- rather than U.S. products -- overseas. 

The focus of the president and Democrats in Congress has been on rebuilding our economy and supporting small business. Small businesses are now receiving $40 billion in tax credits to help them provide health insurance to employees. 

The Wall Street Reform bill now ensures that small businesses will never again have to pay for the irresponsible actions of certain big banks. 

Our “Make it in America” agenda is a plan to boost manufacturing and innovation, strengthen the U.S. workforce and create a level playing field for American companies to compete worldwide. The goal is to expand the number of secure, well-paying jobs and reward those businesses that grow by putting Americans to work -- rather than those that outsource U.S. jobs. 

We have already sent the first item to the president’s desk: the U.S. Manufacturing Enhancement Act, which makes it cheaper for American companies to get the materials they need to manufacture U.S. goods by eliminating certain tariffs, ultimately making them more competitive. And we will continue to move this agenda forward in the fall. 

We do not want to return to the policies that brought our country to the brink of economic collapse. Democrats are committed to moving the United States forward; supporting innovation and job creation, and preventing a return to the economic policies that benefited big corporate special interests at the expense of U.S. taxpayers and workers. 

We have made important progress. But we won’t stop until every American who wants to work has the opportunity to do so. 

 

 

 

While the private sector has shown modest job gains in recent months, additional action is needed.  This is why the House is returning to session next week to pass legislation that will save and create 290,000 American jobs (140,000 teacher jobs saved and 150,000 jobs created or saved, including police officers, firefighters and nurses). 

-by Lauren Bloomberg

 The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) released a new report on Monday, underscoring the need to extend the Emergency Fund for Job Creation and Assistance program that is set to expire on September 30, 2010.  The program helps States immediately support job programs and is estimated to have helped create hundreds of thousands of jobs (including private sector) in States across the country since its inception in 2009. Yesterday, Chairman Levin introduced legislation to extend the program for a year.

Calling the program a “bright spot” in the recovering economy, CBPP illustrates the impact of allowing the program to expire in States across the country:

“… some of these programs have already stopped taking applications in anticipation of the fund’s September 30 expiration, and most programs will shut down or significantly scale back their operations on that date (see Figure 1). Unless Congress extends the fund, tens of thousands of people across the country will lose jobs — potentially raising the unemployment rate in places with particularly large programs, such as Illinois and Los Angeles. Such job losses are both troubling and unnecessary: the House has twice passed extensions that were fully offset to avoid increasing the deficit, but the Senate has thus far failed to act.”

States can draw on the Emergency Fund, created by the 2009 Recovery Act, to create subsidized jobs in the private and public sectors for low-income individuals who otherwise would be unemployed. Officials in the 37 states (including the District of Columbia) operating these jobs programs estimate that by September, they will have placed more than 240,000 unemployed parents and their teenage children in subsidized jobs funded in whole or in part by the fund (see Figure 2 and Appendix A). That number would grow substantially if states had another year to operate their programs.

Examples of [the program] at work include:

• South Carolina is using the program to provide jobs to parents who would otherwise be receiving cash assistance through the state’s regular TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) program.
• Illinois has placed more than 20,000 individuals in jobs, far exceeding its original goal of 12,000 placements.
• Alabama is using the program to provide jobs to TANF recipients statewide, but has found it especially helpful in rural communities where very few job opportunities exist.
• North Dakota is providing jobs for unemployed non-custodial parents who don’t have the financial resources to meet their child support
• A rural community in Tennessee created 400 new jobs and helped reduce the county’s unemployment rate from 27.3 to 18.6 percent over an eight-month period.

Emergency Fund for Job Creation and Assistance program has the strong support of several Republicans.  Haley Barbour, the Republican Governor of Mississippi, called it a welfare to work program and urged for an extension.  In fact, despite Congressional Republican objection, a number of Republicans outside the Washington beltway have lauded the program as an effective mechanism to create jobs and help families.

• On a bipartisan basis, the National Governors Association, the National Conference of State Legislatures, and the National Association of Counties have all urged Congress to continue the program as a way to create jobs and help families.
• Kevin Hassett of the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) writes, “Given the state of the labor market, it is hard to imagine how any sensible person could oppose [extending the emergency fund].”  “If they are to be more than the party of no, Republicans need to rally around the Democrats who have shown such reserved pragmatism.”

Click here to view the letters.

- by Lauren Bloomberg

Click here for additional information, including draft legislative text, summary and estimated revenue effects.

-by Lauren Bloomberg  

A new report out this week by the Department of the Treasury, shows that between February and May of this year, American businesses hired an estimated 4.5 million new workers who had been unemployed for eight weeks or longer, which allows the businesses to receive a tax exemption made possible by H.R. 2847 the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment (HIRE) Act which passed the House on March 4, 2010, and President Obama signed into law on March 18, 2010.

The HIRE Act provides employers with incentives to hire and retain new employees by exempting employers from paying the employer share of Social Security employment taxes (6.2% of the first $106,800 of wages) for wages paid in 2010 for any new employee hired after February 3, 2010 and before January 1, 2011 if the new employee (1) was previously unemployed and (2) does not replace another employee of the employer. To encourage employers to retain these new employees, the bill would provide employers with a $1,000 income tax credit for every new employee that they continue to employ for 52 weeks.

In addition to tax incentives for businesses to spur job growth, the HIRE Act includes provisions to spur small business investments, expand the Build America Bonds Program, extend surface transportation programs, and provide the U.S. Treasury with new tools to find and prosecute U.S. individuals that hide assets overseas.

Click here for a fact sheet that provides a complete list of provisions in the HIRE Act.

- by Cameron Brenchley

On Monday, Chairman Levin wrote an opinion-editorial for The Hill on the need to create green jobs and technologies.  Chairman Levin writes:

The economic challenges facing our nation present us with great opportunity to rethink and retool how we build the economy and workforce of the 21st century.  Nowhere is this more evident than in the renewable energy and green economy.

Chairman Levin notes that events such as the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico should force us to reconsider our dependence on fossil fuels for our transportation needs.  Additionally, that without action, the United States may not keep up with governments in China, Korea, and other nations who are moving forward in helping their industries dominate in green technologies.

If we are not aggressive about expanding our green manufacturing capacity, these manufacturing jobs will be created overseas, and the U.S. will become more reliant on products that are produced outside of our borders.

The U.S. took a good first step supporting domestic manufacturing in the Recovery Act, and we must now seize the opportunity to build on that investment and make crystal clear that the government is a full, active and effective partner in creating green jobs and technologies.

We must keep [up the] momentum through further incentives to manufacture electric and hybrid vehicle technologies here in the U.S.

In April, the Committee held a hearing on Energy Tax Incentives Driving the Green Job Economy, examining the effectiveness of current energy tax policy and looking at additional steps the Committee could take to continue spurring job growth in the green job economy.

Click here to watch Chairman Levin’s opening statement at the hearing.

Related: Witness Testimony Confirms Energy Tax Incentives are Creating Jobs as We Reduce our Dependence on Foreign Oil

- by Cameron Brenchley

Senate inaction leaves 1.2 million unemployed workers without benefits by the end of the week

During debate on legislation to block a 21 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors, Chairman Levin blasted Senate Republicans for obstructing H.R. 4213, the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act, job-creating legislation which includes both Medicare physician payment provisions and an extension of critical unemployment benefits for millions of Americans who have lost their job through no fault of their own: 

“They [Senate Republicans] are willing to put politics before people, and they are leaving millions of unemployed workers thrown out of work by this recession through no fault of their own, without their unemployment insurance benefits,” said Levin. “Instead, they seem willing to let loopholes that permit jobs to be shipped overseas continue to remain open. Republicans, in a word are saying to the American people that they care more about their political futures than they do the daily lives of millions and millions of Americans. We will not let that stand. We will continue to stand on is the side of seniors and the physicians who treat them, on the side of unemployed workers and their families. On the side of millions who are looking for jobs. On the side of youth seeking employment. And on the side of those who would benefit from tax measures and bond measures that are supporting millions of jobs.

- by Lauren Bloomberg

Earlier this week Tim Fernholz of The American Prospect had a great article highlighting how successful the Build America Bonds program has been since its inception under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  Fernholz states:

The House recently passed H.R. 4213 The American Jobs & Closing Tax Loopholes Act of 2010 which would extend the popular Build America Bonds program, which has not only allowed State and local governments to invest more than $97 billion in infrastructure projects nationwide but has also supported more than 1.7 million jobs nationwide.

 by Cameron Brenchley