No Lobbying Help for the Little Guys: Trade groups are silent on a $30 billion fund to spur lending

No Lobbying Help for the Little Guys

Trade groups are silent on a $30 billion fund to spur lending By Mark Drajem, Laura Keeley and David Henry

In 2008, three of the best-known business trade groups in Washington blitzed Congress to approve a $700 billion bailout for Wall Street. Two years later, those groups—the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Business, and the National Association of Manufacturers—are missing in action as the smaller companies that account for the majority of their membership seek a $30 billion rescue of their own.

The silence is leaving car-parts makers, franchise owners, and community bankers to fend for themselves in pushing for a small business lending fund, which has languished in Congress since President Barack Obama proposed it late last year. The Senate could vote on the fund as early as July 29. The hands-off approach reflects the public backlash against government spending, particularly the Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program, which rescued the country's biggest banks but sparked populist ire. Federal spending has become a flash point in many of this fall's congressional races.

The measure would ease terms for loans guaranteed by the Small Business Administration, provide $12 billion in tax breaks, and issue grants to states for business loans. While lawmakers in both parties—and the business lobbies—lauded those provisions, most Republicans balked at a related $30 billion fund that would be used to encourage community banks to lend to small businesses. "This is as American as apple pie," Obama said of the bill on July 28, as he met with small business owners at a Tastee Sub Shop in Edison, N.J.

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The major business groups, which together spent more than $47 million to lobby for tax cuts and against the Administration's health-care overhaul in the first six months of this year, haven't been moved by arguments such as Kersting's. The silence "certainly is peculiar," says Frank Knapp Jr., president of the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce, which is critical of the U.S. Chamber. "But it's not unusual that they lose interest when the money is going to community banks and small businesses."

The Bottom Line: Trade groups that lobbied for the big bank bailout aren't backing a $30 billion fund that could stimulate small business lending.

I remember this same BS from Republicans when the environmental groups refused to get behind the "clean skies act" or "clean water act" or whatever piece of bullshit legislation bush was trying to pass off as environmental... they claimed it was proof that these environmental groups didn't really care about the environment and were just shills for the left. And by your logic, they are absolutely correct!

Washington's chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business has handed out its early endorsements for 2010 legislative races, and it looks like straight Republican-party ticket.

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