Bill Clinton: “And what would be the size loan that you think that we ought to look at? Let me back up and say--you know how the SBA…”

“And what would be the size loan that you think that we ought to look at? Let me back up and say--you know how the SBA program works, the SBA loan guarantee program works, and one of the things that I'm proudest of about our administration and all this work we've done to try to give the American people a Government that costs less and does more is that we have reduced the budget of SBA by about 40 percent and we've doubled the loan volume. But one of the things that we were compelled to do, given the budgetary situation we were in, is to go from a maximum loan of, I think it used to be $1 million, down to three-quarters of a million. But what I gather you're saying is that you need a bigger one even than that. You think there should be some sort of a program for nonbankable loans for a modest sized business that goes up to, what, $2 million? [The participant said that $2 million would serve to get small businesses over the hurdle to the point where they would be bankable without an SBA guarantee. Mr. McGowan indicated that SBA limitations were partially a result of success, because SBA had gone from 26,000 loans to 56,000.]”