The U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship held a June 8 roundtable on “The State of Small Business Lending: Identifying Obstacles and Exploring Solutions.”

Participating in the roundtable was an NSBA member from Virginia who has had difficulty obtaining credit, despite owning a thriving small firm that recently won a substantial contract from the federal government to provide assistance to the U.S. Census Bureau. The roundtable also featured lenders, regulators, and officials from the U.S Small Business Administration (SBA).

The roundtable was focused on three key aspects of the current lending environment: the current state of small-business lending; obstacles to lending; and possible solutions, including the Small Business Lending Fund proposal and the forthcoming “Jobs 3” bill.

The “Jobs 3” bill is expected to include the Small Business Job Creation and Access to Capital Act (S. 2869), introduced by Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), the chair and ranking member of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, which would extend the small-business stimulus provisions through 2010. It also would increase the loan limit on 7(a) loans from $2 million to $5 million, on 504 loans from $1.5 million to $5.5 million, and microloans from $35,000 to $50,000.

The bill also creates an Intermediary Lending Pilot Program, which would authorize a new three-year pilot program in which the SBA could make loans of $1 million at an interest rate of 1 percent to 20 local private non-profit lending intermediaries that would then lend out money to capitalize small business revolving funds. 

The Congressional Budget Office scored the SBA 7(a) and 504 provisions in S. 2869 at zero cost.

An identical bill—the Small Business Job Creation and Access to Capital Act (H.R. 4302)—has been introduced in the House by Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.).