Senate Democrats recently passed the Small Business Jobs Act. This legislation will help small businesses create as many as 500,000 new jobs.

At a time when the credit crunch has starved America's 27 million small businesses of the capital they need to expand and hire, the fully-paid-for Small Business Jobs Act will provide small businesses that access to capital, robust incentives for investment, and support for innovation and entrepreneurship.

The Small Business Jobs Act will:

• Give small businesses $12 billion in tax cuts


• Help small businesses create 500,000 jobs


• Incentivize and increase small business lending


• Help small business owners access private capital to expand and hire new workers


• Reward entrepreneurs for investing in new small businesses


• Help Main Street businesses compete with large corporations

The Small Business Jobs Act includes:

• 100% exclusion from capital gains taxes on small business investments.


• A $10,000 tax deduction for start-up expenditures - doubling current levels.


• Increased Section 179 expensing, permitting up to $500,000 in capital investments that business can expense.


• New tools to help small businesses export which will leverage more than $1 billion in exports, creating or saving as many as 40,000 to 50,000 jobs this year alone.


• Increased Small Business Administration (SBA) loan limits and improved access and lower costs for small business to access SBA loans.


• A targeted $30 billion Small Business Lending Fund to provide small community banks with capital to increase small business lending.


• $1.5 billion in grants to support $15 billion in new small business lending through already successful state programs.

You can learn more about the Small Business Jobs Act at the Democratic Policy Committee website.