[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 12982-12983]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        SMALL BUSINESS JOBS BILL

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, my friend the majority leader mentioned 
the small business jobs bill. I recently had an opportunity to talk to 
Senator Snowe, who is the author of that legislation. I assured her we 
are anxious to move forward. I appreciate his bringing up the 
discussion we have been having about reaching a consent agreement that 
would allow us to expedite the bill. I know my friend from Nevada 
shares my view that small business is an area that needs attention. We 
are going to continue to try to come to agreement to move forward with 
that very important piece of legislation which I support and I believe 
most Members of my conference do as well.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, as I have said before, this legislation is 
bipartisan. Most of the bill has been crafted in the past when Senator 
Snowe was chairman of the Small Business Committee. I am glad to hear 
my friend Senator Snowe has had a conversation with the Republican 
leader. That is good news. We will see what we can do to move on. I 
hope everyone realizes that jobs in America are not created in large 
numbers by big companies; it is small businesses.
  In the past few months, we passed a relatively small piece of 
legislation, but it has been extremely helpful to small business. We 
extended the highway bill for a year. That saved 1 million jobs in 
America, hundreds of jobs in Nevada. We also had a provision that was 
unique and has created some jobs that has been extremely helpful. If 
somebody is out of work for 60 days, they can be hired for 30 hours. We 
don't set what price they can be hired, the minimum wage or whatever. 
At the end of their report period for withholding, they don't have to 
pay the withholding tax. At the end of a year, we give them a $1,000 
tax credit for every employee. We also did something that was totally 
bipartisan, a bill developed by Senators Schumer and Hatch. That is 
what I just talked about. That was totally bipartisan. We had another 
provision in that bill that said that a small business, if they wanted 
to buy a piece of equipment, whether it was an automobile, furniture, 
whatever it might be, no longer had to depreciate that. Up to $250,000, 
they could simply write it off. We also added to that bill some money 
for Build America Bonds which local governments loved. That has created 
some jobs, but it is relatively small compared to the other things we 
have in this bill before the Senate now. I am glad to hear what the 
distinguished Republican leader had to say about that.
  Mr. McCONNELL. The majority leader is entirely correct about the 
importance of small business. We know it creates the vast majority of 
jobs. There is no question that small business at this particular point 
is kind of frozen with concern about the economy, about increased 
regulation, the potential for increased taxation as well. Senator Snowe 
has certainly been the leader on our side on focusing on small business 
and small business job development. I am hoping we can work out a way 
to go forward on a bipartisan basis. It sounds

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to me as though both sides agree on the premise. Now if we can get a 
procedure for moving forward, hopefully we can address this most 
important subject.

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