Obama pledges $30b for small businesses

US President Barack Obama has said that 30 billion dollars from a Wall Street bailout fund would be used to help small businesses still reeling from financial crisis.

“I’m proposing that we take 30 billion dollars of the money Wall Street banks have repaid and use it to help community banks give small businesses the credit they need to stay afloat,” Obama said in his first State of the Union address.

Many of the biggest US banks have repaid billions of dollars they borrowed from the state-run Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) established to bail out the financial industry on the verge of collapse from the financial crisis.

The crisis stemmed from an American home mortgage meltdown.

Obama also proposed a new small-business tax credit, “one that will go to over one million small businesses who hire new workers or raise wages.”

“While we’re at it, let’s also eliminate all capital gains taxes on small business investment, and provide a tax incentive for all businesses, large and small, to invest in new plants and equipment,” he said.
Source: AFP