Livingston, MT -- Tired of the current economy's effect on his small business customers nationwide, Andrew Field, founder and president of PrintingForLess.com (PFL), took action. Field developed a small business stimulus proposal and sent it to U.S. Senator Max Baucus, chair of the Senate Finance Committee. Senator Baucus was impressed. Andrew then shared the letter with several small business people around the country, most of whom also reacted favorably to it. Struck by its originality, Forbes.com featured the plan on its home page today, and published it at http://www.forbes.com/home/2009/01/16/small-business-loans-oped-cx_af_0116field.html.
 
"I wrote the proposal because many of America's 20 million small and medium businesses (SMBs) might not make it another 90 days, and something needs to be done fast," says Field. "Many of our SMB customers face a convergence of factors that most of us have never seen before, and it may drive many of them out of business, resulting in millions more job losses. SMBs don't have powerful lobbies, and their dire plight has not garnered any media or political attention. The current outline of the stimulus plan provides no meaningful help for America's SMB's, putting half of the nation's jobs at severe risk."
 
Field's small business stimulus plan includes the following:
 
- The plan treats jobs provided by a business as assets against which the employer can borrow. Presently, if credit is available at all, it is only when it is collateralized by hard assets: plant, equipment, inventory or receivables.
 
- Makes available to small businesses $20,000 in unsecured loans for each full-time employee. The logic is simple. The government is borrowing 10-year money at about 2.5%, so this plan makes it available to SMBs at 5%, with interest-only payments for the first five years and an expectation of complete repayment over the next five years.
 
- The loans would be administered through the Small Business Administration's (SBA) direct lending capability with a one-page application form and a same-day closing. These are capabilities that the SBA already has. Employers would document their fulltime employee count by providing the most recent federal withholding tax remittance form.
 
Under the plan, if a small business reduces their headcount, a pro-rata portion of their loan must be repaid immediately. If they expand headcount, they gain access to another $20,000 of credit for each net new employee. "This would provide a powerful incentive to small businesses to maintain and increase their employment levels" says Field.
 
"Small businesses don't want a handout, we just want reasonable access to credit so that we can innovate, employ, and grow," says Field. "If something isn't done quickly, millions of people will be thrown out of work due to the failure of small businesses caught in the fallout from mismanagement on Wall Street and regulatory failure."
 
There has been widespread support for the plan from people all across the political spectrum. "Tinkering with tired solutions like loan guarantee programs won't get the job done. The aid for Detroit was based upon job preservation. This plan would preserve more jobs, at little or no long-term cost to the government," says Field. "If you support this concept, let your voice be heard in Washington."