Having finally enacted a temporary extension of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), Congress recently has turned its attention to their more long-term reauthorization and appropriation.

Last week, the U.S. Senate approved an amended “Tax Extenders Bill” (H.R. 4213), which authorized and appropriated funds for an extension of the ARRA provisions that provided a 90 percent guarantee on SBA 7(a) loans and eliminated the borrower fees on both 7(a) and 504 SBA loans through 2010, as repeatedly called for by NSBA.

The Senate had been expected to allocate $354 million for this extension, but Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), the chair and ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship, introduced a technical amendment, increasing the funding to $560 million—not including the $60 million that was appropriated earlier in the month just to reinstate the provisions through March.

Landrieu and Snowe did not believe that the original allocation would prove adequate to keep the provisions in place through the calendar year. NSBA applauds their efforts to ensure that these critical provisions are sufficiently funded to last through 2010.

Although H.R. 4213 was fashioned significantly on an earlier version passed by the House in Dec. 2009, the House must re-approve the latest version, due to the various technical changes made by the Senate. The House is expected to consider the amended bill soon.

For more details on the various tax provisions of H.R. 4213, please click here.