This vote was on passing a bill that would provide a variety of tax incentives for small businesses, allow small businesses to write assets off more quickly, create a new $30 billion small business lending fund, and make several other changes to tax policy intended to encourage small business growth, such as eliminating a requirement in current tax law that taxes portions of business-related cell phone use. The cost of the bill’s tax provisions would be paid for by increasing penalties for failing to file tax returns, by limiting the ability of paper manufacturers to claim a tax credit for biofuels, and tightening rules on federal contractors who are delinquent on their taxes.

The bill is intended to fill in the cracks not covered by the financial bailout of large banks by making more capital available to community banks, which by and large do more lending to small businesses.

No one spoke specifically either for or against this vote, mostly because the key test vote had already succeeded (see vote 236), making the outcome of this vote virtually assured.  

Republicans by and large did not object to this bill per se, but spent most of their time complaining that Democrats had hijacked the Senate’s processes in order to curtail Republicans’ opportunities to offer amendments and influence the bill. 

Democrats answered by suggesting that Republicans were more interested in blocking the bill as a means of punishing Democrats before the upcoming mid-term congressional elections than making any substantive objections, and by touting the bill’s potential for helping to create jobs, and to spur small business growth by making more credit available to them.

By a vote of 61-38, the Senate passed the bill.  Every Democrat present voted for the bill.  All but two Republicans present voted against the bill.  The end result is that the Senate passed a bill that would provide a variety of tax incentives to small businesses, and create  a $30 billion lending fund for small businesses.