Entrepreneurs: Building Businesses, Creating Jobs, Strengthening Our Economy

Posted by White House

Ed. Note: This week the Obama Administration celebrating America’s entrepreneurs and small businesses as part of National Entrepreneurship Week.

I’m thrilled that we’re taking time this week – as a nation – to support and celebrate America’s entrepreneurial spirit. Entrepreneurs and small business owners continue to drive innovation, strengthen our competitive edge, and create good jobs here at home.

These entrepreneurs need access to capital in order to start and grow their small businesses. When a small business loan gets approved, they get the lines of credit to buy space and equipment and to hire more workers. It’s an exciting moment.

Because of the Recovery Act, the SBA was able to work with its lending partners to provide nearly 70,000 SBA loans to entrepreneurs and small business owners to help them do just that. And now, under the new Small Business Jobs Act, the SBA has already approved 7,000 more SBA loans in just two months.

Noel and Glen Mouritzen are a good example. They attended the event where the President signed the Jobs Act. They’re using their new Jobs Act loan to set up a repair shop for helicopter fuel systems near an airport in Virginia. As a result, they’re planning to hire four or five new workers.

In addition, by strengthening a network of growth capital firms – called Small Business Investment Companies – we’ve reached a 50-year record high of nearly $1.6 billion in overall financing to high-growth small firms in Fiscal Year 2010.

And it’s not just SBA that is playing an active role in the success stories of America’s entrepreneurs. Other federal agencies have unique lending programs, too.

• The Export-Import Bank, like the SBA, has loans that can help small businesses who are looking to export their goods and services.
• The USDA offers loans to farmers and rural businesses.
• The Department of Transportation helps small businesses who need working capital to finance a contract they’ve won from that agency.

All of us throughout the Administration know that it’s more important than ever to help entrepreneurs and small business owners get the capital they need to grow and create jobs.

If you want to find out more about SBA loans – as well as other help we can provide through opportunities in federal contracting and one-on-one counseling for small businesses – I’d encourage you to visit www.sba.gov.

And our commitment throughout the Administration is this. We will continue to help America’s entrepreneurs find the tools they need to do what they do best: build their businesses, create jobs, and strengthen our economy.

Helping More Women-Owned Small Businesses Compete for Federal Contracts

Posted by White House

Today, at the White House Women’s Entrepreneurship Conference, I announced the official roll-out of an important new tool for women-owned small businesses. It’s called the Women’s Contracting Rule and it will help put more federal contracts in their hands.

These contracts will help women take their business to the next level and create the jobs we need.

Here’s the situation. Even though women lead some of the strongest and most innovative small firms, and women-owned firms are among the fastest growing sectors of our economy, they continue to be underrepresented in the federal contracting marketplace.

That’s why – back in 2000 – Congress passed a law authorizing the SBA to set up a program to help ensure that at least 5 percent of contracts from federal agencies go to small women-owned firms. When President Obama took office, a Women’s Contracting Rule still hadn’t been implemented, so we made it a top priority and got to work. We analyzed the contracting marketplace for women-owned firms, and we gathered input from more than 1,000 women’s business groups and women business leaders. With their help, we moved forward.

The final rule we announced today is focused on 83 industries in which we know there are too few contracting dollars and/or too few contracts going to small women-owned firms. After the rule is published in the Federal Register today, we’ll be working closely with the federal agencies to give them the systems and the training they need to set-aside more contracts for small, women-owned firms. We expect for the program to be operational in about 4 months. That means by early 2011, a new women’s small business contracting program will be up and running.

More importantly, this means that millions of small firms owned by women across the U.S. will have more opportunities to compete for and win federal contracts, grow their businesses, and create more good American jobs. That's good news for women-owned firms, and that's good news for our economy.

Economic Recovery for Small Businesses: Now is Not the Time to Pull Back

Posted by White House

As I travel around the country, I meet many small business owners who are poised to take that next step to grow their business and create jobs. In fact, this morning’s USA Today looks at one of those business owners - Amarjit Kaur who runs a convenience store and gas station in Wood Village, OR. Amarjit has been approved for an SBA loan so she can buy the property she now leases. But today her application sits in a queue waiting for passage of the Small Business Jobs Act currently before the Senate.

Here’s what’s happening: Up until a few months ago, SBA was able to waive the fees for SBA loan borrowers. This allowed small business owners to put more money back into their business. In fact, these fee reductions will save Amarjit about $35,000. At the same time, we were able to increase the government guarantee on SBA loans, to encourage more banks and credit unions to go ahead and make SBA loans to good, creditworthy small businesses.

This worked. SBA lenders approved about 70,000 SBA Recovery loans for small businesses since the Recovery Act passed, nearly $30 billion in total. And, we brought more than 1,300 lenders back to making SBA loans at a time when other banks were cutting back their small business lending.

Unfortunately, the funding for these popular enhancements ran out at the end of May – just when small business owners like Amarjit needed it. With support in Congress for extending these successful loan enhancements, we started the Recovery Loan Queue, a stand-by list just like at the airport.

Today, that list is at nearly 1,000 small businesses long, including Amarjit’s, totaling almost $500 million in loans. With the passage of the Small Business Jobs Act, SBA will be able to fund these loans. Additionally, among other programs, the Act will create the Small Business Lending Fund to provide additional capital to small, community banks so they can boost their lending to small businesses locally.

As Amarjit’s story points out, now is not the time to pull back. In communities all across the country there are business owners just like her who are in a position to do exactly what our economy needs them to do – grow and create jobs. With the Small Business Jobs Act, we can be the very partner these business owners need by giving them the tools to continue to drive our economic recovery.