Press Release

Standing With Rochester Business Alliance, Gillibrand Announces New Legislation To Help Small Businesses Create Jobs Across Finger Lakes Region

Jul 23, 2010

Rochester, NY – Standing with the Rochester Business Alliance, U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand today announced new Senate legislation to help small businesses create good-paying jobs across the Finger Lakes Region. Small businesses are responsible for half of all private sector jobs and roughly 70 percent of all new jobs in the past decade. Senator Gillibrand announced her new proposal that would support entrepreneurs, incentivize investments in small businesses, and increase lending.

“The number one issue on people’s mind is jobs and small businesses are the most important job generators we have,” said Senator Gillibrand. “Small businesses are not only job generators, they’re the heart of the American story and the future of our economy. Without access to capital and credit, businesses cannot grow and create jobs. Now more than ever we must take common sense actions to give our small businesses the tools they need to succeed.”

In the past 15 years, small businesses generated nearly two-thirds of all new jobs created in the United States – yet during the economic crisis, small business owners have struggled to obtain capital and access credit they need to grow.

Senator Gillibrand’s proposal include:

Support Entrepreneurs By Incentivizing Investment In Small Businesses. This legislation would eliminate capital gains taxes on investments into small businesses, which would help attract capital for businesses to expand. It also expands the deduction for start-up expenses to encourage new entrepreneurs. By lowering the cost to get a business started, we can give more entrepreneurs an opportunity to start a new business, hire workers, and succeed. 

Invest In New Initiatives To Create More Loans For Small Business. According to a recent survey by the National Small Business Association, 39 percent of small businesses are struggling to access credit. This legislation would infuse over $30 billion into community banks which have a strong record of generating small business lending.  The interest paid by banks on this money would decrease the more small business lending they create, and would increase if banks fail to increase their loans to small business.

Additionally, the legislation would provide support to new and existing state lending programs, many of which have been forced to scale back these programs.  This provision alone would generate more than $300 million of new small business lending in New York. 

Extend Key Initiatives to Improve SBA Loans. This legislation would extend fee waivers for Small Business Administration (SBA) loans, expand the loan limits, and allow the SBA to continue to guarantee up to 90 percent of new loans. Since these changes were first passed in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, they have significantly increased businesses access to SBA lending by bringing more than 1,300 new lenders into the program.  In fact, average weekly SBA lending has risen by 90 percent since these changes were enacted.