Helping Small Businesses Hire

In order to put people back to work and turn this recession around, small business owners need to be able to hire and grow. Last week, the Senate took a good step forward in helping small businesses create jobs by passing the Small Business Jobs Act. The bill helps entrepreneurs jump-start their own businesses and provides small businesses with tax cuts and improved access to lending.

At town halls across Oregon this year, Senator Jeff Merkley heard stories from small business owners whose lines of credit had dried up. Jeff tackled this challenge by working to pass his plan to get healthy community banks lending to small businesses. The provision, which Jeff first introduced as the Bank on Our Communities Act, will provide capital to community banks so they can get lending flowing to small businesses again. When small businesses have access to capital, they can grow and create jobs.

The Small Business Jobs Act also includes Jeff's Jump-Start Act which encourages job creation by lowering the start-up costs for entrepreneurs. For businesses in their first year, the Jump-Start Act increases the start-up deduction from $5,000 to $10,000 and allows more businesses to take advantage of the full deduction. The result: this will put people to work right away and create an estimated 34,000 jobs per year.

Jeff understands that the success of our economy relies on the success of small businesses. He'll continue working with small business owners to help them create jobs for Oregonians and put our economy back on track.