With the “fiscal cliff” likely to be averted, consumers are gearing up for the Holiday season. Retail designated shopping days “Black Friday,” “Small Business Saturday,” and “Cyber Monday” all saw an increase in sales, a good sign of consumer optimism heading into December.
Small businesses depend on retail spending days like these, and on consumer optimism throughout the year. And a big part of successfully growing their business is to have adequate access to financing. But “tight credit” and “small business” have been tied together by politicians and pundits as headwinds to economic recovery. Last year, PPI contributor Brian Martin wrote “The Credit Gap: Easing the Squeeze on the Smallest Business” showing how increasing lending caps at credit unions would unleash billions to the smallest small businesses (50 employees or less) and allow new growth and hiring opportunities with no taxpayer assistance.
So PPI is spotlighting Martin’s paper. We urge Congress to pass the Credit Union Small Business Jobs Bill, S. 2231 [introduced Senator Mark Udall (D-CO)]. This bipartisan bill would raise the credit union member business lending cap to 27.5% of assets and could provide up to $13 billion to small businesses in the first year alone. This could create over 140,000 new jobs at no cost to taxpayers.
