Small Businesses Creating Jobs is the Core of the American Jobs Act

Anyone who saw President Obama speak last night knows that helping small businesses create jobs is the core of the American Jobs Act.  The President laid out powerful, bipartisan, specific, paid-for proposals that will help put America back to work now.  This includes:

• Cutting in half the payroll taxes for small businesses for the first $5 million in wages
• Temporarily eliminating employer payroll taxes for small businesses that create jobs or give raises above the prior year
• Extending an immediate 100% expensing write-off to encourage businesses to invest in more machinery and equipment
• Large tax credits (up to $4,000) for businesses that hire unemployed workers, with bigger credits (up to $9,600) for hiring unemployed veterans and service-disabled veterans
• Powerful investments in schools, roads, rail, and airports while helping small business contractors compete for infrastructure contracts
• Making it easier for States to allow unemployed workers to create their own jobs by starting their own business

America’s small businesses – like DynaLabs that I’m visiting today in St. Louis – are counting on Congress to turn this plan into reality. 

Founded in 2003, Dynalabs specializes in using cutting-edge technologies to provide quality-assurance services to large medical companies.  They recently increased their staff by nearly 50%, and they will soon open a new facility to possibly add even more jobs to meet demand.  We need to make sure they have every incentive to hire their next workers as quickly as possible.

As the President said, the Administration is moving forward with ideas that don’t need Congressional action, such as paying small businesses more quickly for federal contracts and cutting the red tape that prevents many fast-growing startups from getting the capital they need through things like “crowdfunding.”

We need Congress to join us in putting small businesses first and getting the job done.  If they do the right thing, the American Jobs Act will empower the world’s greatest entrepreneurs and small business owners to do what they do best: create good jobs, drive competitiveness and innovation, and strengthen economic security for the middle class.

About the Author

Karen Gordon Mills is the Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration. The SBA helps both Main Street and high-growth small businesses get access to capital, counseling, federal contracts, disaster assistance and more.