Phoenix Business Journal Friday, February 26, 2010 (Excerpts) - Karen Mills was sworn in as head of the U.S. Small Business Administration last April, just as the economic stimulus bill was starting to revive the SBA’s lending programs. Now she is pushing President Barack Obama’s jobs plan, which calls for increased lending to small businesses, tax breaks for hiring and business investment, and programs to help innovative businesses grow.

Mills sat down Feb. 18 with Kent Hoover, the Washington Bureau chief of American City Business Journals, to talk about increasing small businesses’ access to capital...

...We have a program called 504. It’s for owner-occupied real estate, if you expand and create jobs. Temporarily, let’s use 504 to do owner-occupied real estate refinancing -- not the bad stuff, not the speculative portfolios that have been accumulated; but owner-occupied, and you haven’t gone into default. It’s probably less risky than funding an expansion. It looks like we can do it for zero subsidy; we’ll charge a fee to take on the risk, and we’ll need a little administrative oversight. We think we can do $7 billion to $10 billion at very little or no cost to taxpayers.

We have the infrastructure to do that right now. We know the demand is going to be there. (end)

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