On the recordJuly 14, 2010
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.
