Guys, I linked to the video of the President's statement about the bill only because he (or rather, his speech writer) summarized the bill so clearly. It could have been anyone making the statement for all I cared.
When I first posted about HR 5297, the Small Business Jobs and Credit Bill, many people had not heard anything about the bill and the provisions to temporarily eliminate the SBA Guarantee fee and increase the guarantee percentage. I know car wash owners who could not take advantage of the temporary fee waivers and higher guarantees during previous periods under the Recovery Act because they found out about them only within a week or so of those periodic expirations. That was not enough time to get tax returns done, plans approved by the cities, equipment quoted, contracts written, etc.. Not knowing can cost tens of thousands of dollars. I know car wash owners where it did cost that much because they weren't aware until it was too late. My objective for this thread was to make people who read AutoCareForum aware of the opportunity early this time. For a variety of reasons this may be the last time that you and I will see these fee waivers and higher guarantee percentage.
Back in July and August others in my lender associations and I were not certain that the Jobs Bill would pass in the Senate. It was only two weeks ago when two Republicans broke the 60-vote barrier that we could see that it might happen.
Men, when we contact our Senators and Representatives we do have a say in how they vote. I know that it isn't much, but contacting them makes me feel that I am making a difference. If any of you also wanted the bill to pass (or even not pass) I thought that you'd find it interesting to contact your Senators and Representative by using their web sites. Call me naive, but I did not know until the day that I posted the steps for finding their web sites and contacting them through those sites that we could even do that. Now any of us can use those steps to contact them about other issues that we care about.
For the good of you guys and other people in the car wash industry I wanted you to know about the bill, something about the provisions in the bill, and the expiration date of some of those provisions.
Alan Bussey