John Kerry: “once again, too many of our Nation's small businesses are facing difficulty in gaining access to capital. That is why…”

“once again, too many of our Nation's small businesses are facing difficulty in gaining access to capital. That is why today I am introducing the Increasing Small Business Lending Act to increase access to capital for our Nation's small businesses to help them sustain and build their businesses, create jobs and expand our economy. In October 2008, markets froze. Credit lines were cut. A lending gap was created in the market. Even Small Business Administration guaranteed loans, that help reduce risk for lenders, were stalled. Congress stepped up and enacted temporary measures to help fill the gaps in small business lending, saving nearly 90,000 small businesses. One such business is LazerCraze in North Andover, Massachusetts that received an SBA loan to expand to a second location and purchase state- of-the-art equipment that allowed them to hire an additional 37 full time employees. SBA, administrator Karen Mills has said that the previous temporary changes to the SBA loan programs were a success, ``In short, it worked. We engineered a turnaround in SBA lending even though conventional credit was, and still is to some extent, very tight. Taxpayers got a big bang for the buck. With just over a billion dollars in total subsidy, we supported about $42 billion in lending. In fact, SBA had its highest-ever weekly loan volume the week before Christmas when we supported nearly 2 billion dollars in lending, 10 billion total last quarter.…”