Small businesses want SBA to do more to help Main Street - Baltimore Business Journal:

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The SBA began on Monday to accept applicationsa for emergency bridge loans of upto $35,000. Smalll businesses can use these which were created by the economicstimuluss bill, to make up to six monthsx of payments on existing They won’t have to start repaying the loans until a year after the last disbursement. The SBA will subsidizre the interest on these which will be offeredthrough private-sector The stimulus bill also temporarily reduced or eliminated fees on the SBA’z regular 7(a) and 504 business loans, and increased the government guarantee on 7(a) loans to 90 percent.
Weeklg loan volume for the SBA’s 7(a) and 504 programs has increase d by more than 30 percent since these changese were implementedMarch 16. This increase in SBA lendinhg is “a positive and welcomed sign, but we have a very long way to go before SBA lending reaches solid levels saidCynthia Blankenship, vice chairman and chief operating officer of Bank of the West in Texas. Blankenship told the House Smallk Business Committee last week that Congress shoulf extend the fee reductions beyond 2009 or make them given the depth of the recession and the credit crisis facingsmall businesses.