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Obama pushes Congress to pass small business plan (Reuters)

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:01:15 GMT

U.S. President Barack Obama makes remarks on the Senate campaign finance reform vote in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington July 26, 2010. REUTERS/Jim Young

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama pushed the Senate on Tuesday to pass legislation he says will benefit small businesses and generate jobs, and called on Republicans to back what he described as a plan similar to programs they had supported in the past.

The plan includes a $30 billion fund to invest in community banks to bolster lending to small businesses, which account for a large portion of job creation in the U.S. economy. It also would provide tax credits and exclude some small business stock sales from capital gains taxes.

Obama wants Congress to pass as much legislation as possible before adjourning for its August recess, aware that legislators will be in full campaign mode when they return in mid-September, just weeks before the November 2 elections.

He is traveling to New Jersey on Wednesday, where he will tout the bill at a meeting with small business owners at a sandwich shop.

The House of Representatives, which has already passed a version of the bill, adjourns at the end of this week and the Senate aims to leave at the end of next week.

"These are the kind of common sense steps that folks from both parties have supported in the past," Obama told reporters at the White House in remarks taking aim at Republicans after an hourlong meeting with congressional leaders from both parties that he said was "productive."

"I hope that in the coming days, we'll once again find common ground and get this legislation passed. We shouldn't let America's small businesses be held hostage to partisan politics and certainly not at this critical time," he said.

House Republican leader John Boehner, who attended the meeting, wants to repeal and replace Obama's healthcare overhaul and keep in place tax cuts for wealthy Americans that expire at the end of the year. Obama, who wants to let those cuts expire, has criticized Republicans for supporting economic plans he says helped lead to the recession and favor the rich.

REPUBLICANS WANT SPENDING CUTS

Boehner said Obama should focus on controlling spending and cutting taxes, not raising them.

"According to Congress's official tax scorekeeper, half of small business income in America will face higher taxes under the president's plan at a time when Americans are asking, 'where are the jobs?'" he said.

"Republicans are ready to work with the president to rein in spending and take action to support private sector job creation," Boehner said.

Gene Sperling, counselor to the Treasury Secretary, said the cost of the small business bill comes mainly from its $12 billion in tax cuts, and that he thought the measure had a good chance of passing.

"We feel that if this gets to a final vote, it will pass," he said on a conference call with reporters.

With the jobless rate stuck just under 10 percent, recession-weary Americans go to the polls on November 2 to elect all 435 members of the House and 37 of the 100 members of the Senate.

Sixty-seven percent of voters feel Obama has not focused enough on creating jobs, with the economy seen as the country's main problem, according to Reuters-Ipsos poll results released on Tuesday.

Forty-six percent of registered voters said they would vote Republican in November, versus 44 percent who said they would back Democrats, the poll said. Both Republicans and Democrats anticipate that Republicans will pick up seats against the Democratic majorities in both congressional chambers and could win control of the House.

"Everyone understands that we're less than 100 days from an election," Obama said. "It's during this time that the noise and the chatter about who's up in the polls and which party's ahead threatens to drown out just about everything else."

He said, "The folks we serve ... sent us here to represent their interests, not our own."

(Additional reporting by Donna Smith and Caren Bohan; editing by Jackie Frank)

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Obama pushes Congress to pass small business plan (Reuters)

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