The Senate has temporarily extended two provisionsenacted in the Recovery Act that increase government guarantees and eliminatefees on small-business loans through April 30.
U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business andEntrepreneurship chair Mary L. Landrieu, D-La., praised the temporaryextension. "Extending these important provisions is a good and necessarystep to providing our small businesses with the tools they need to keep theirdoors open and expand," she said in a statement. "But the uncertaintythese repeated short-term extensions bring to entrepreneurs can impact theirplans for growth and impact our lender partners' interest in making theseloans. I look forward to working with my colleagues in Congress to ensure theseprograms receive a long-term extension, like what passed as part of theSenate's second jobs package earlier this month. The long-term extension ofthese programs is critical because it is helping our local economies recoverand creating and saving significant jobs. Just look at the results. Over thelast year, these provisions have added $18.2 billion in lending to more than40,000 small businesses and helped to create more than 500,000 jobs."
The provisions were extended and fully funded to the endof the year in H.R. 4213, The American Workers, State and Business Relief Act,which passed the Senate on March 10. The bill is currently in conferencenegotiations with the House.
Landrieu, along with ranking member Olympia Snowe,R-Maine, included an extension of these provisions as part of S. 2869, TheSmall Business Job Creation and Access to Capital Act.
