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Small-business aid urged for vets, reservists

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., wants the government to do more to help veterans and reservists who are entrepreneurs or who own or work for small businesses.

Kerry, the former presidential candidate and now chairman of the Senate Small Business Committee, recommends providing more loans for small businesses hurt by the mobilization of National Guard or reserve employees, creating a loan program specifically to help recently discharged veterans create new businesses, and giving more tax incentives for small businesses to hire reservists even though they could be mobilized.

The recommendations are part of a report Kerry released that says government policies are “shortchanging America’s veterans.”

The report recommends several types of loans. For example, it suggests the government create a special veteran entrepreneurship loan program aimed at helping recently discharged veterans. It recommends a no-collateral loan of up to $100,000 to help a small business hurt by the loss of an employee who is mobilized, with no payments required or interest accumulated for at least one year, unless the employee returns sooner. It also recommends grants to businesses that cannot get a normal reserve disaster loan and would allow economic disaster loans to be approved before a deployment. Current law allows loans only after a deployment, when a business already may be suffering.

According to the report, about 14 percent of all small business owners are veterans, with about one-third of the businesses based upon skills the veterans learned while in the military. The top concern for small business owners, veteran and nonveteran, is access to capital, but the report says that the proportional dollar share of small business loans going to veteran-owned businesses has fallen over the last four years.

Additionally, the report says programs aimed at helping veterans who own small businesses are not very effective, in part because more than one-third of veterans are not even aware the programs exist.