Strategies: Hey, Mr. President, what about small businesses?

— -- Hey, Mr. President and members of Congress, as long as you're handing out money to huge corporations, how about doing something for small business?

President Bush argued that one reason he's pushing the bailout is to protect the "small business owners ... on Main Street." Well, I live and work on Main Street, and just giving banks a bailout represents another "trickle down" theory. Congress needs to make sure that small businesses are taken care of directly.

Small businesses keep this economy afloat. They create the majority of new jobs; they're fast and flexible. It would take far less than 1% of the $700 billion bailout (geez, that's a lot of money) for small businesses to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs and help re-energize this economy.

Here are some of the things Congress could do immediately for small business and the economy:

•Hire Your First Employee Tax Credit:More than 20 million small companies have no employees. If a mere 1% hired even one employee, we'd create 200,000 new jobs. But it's a big hurdle — financially and emotionally — to take that step. Giving a 25% tax credit for the first year of employment would encourage many non-employer businesses to finally expand.

•Credit card fairness:Small businesses overwhelmingly use credit cards to finance their businesses. But credit card issuers can raise interest rates at any time, use "due date" gimmicks and retroactively raise rates even if you pay them on time. The House has passed a Credit Card Holders Bill of Rights, but it hasn't passed yet in the Senate. As we hand banks $700 billion, we can at least make sure they treat us fairly.

•Small Business Administration loans:Having trouble getting an SBA loan? There's a reason: "Since 2005, there's been zero funding of the SBA 7A loan guarantee program, the flagship program of SBA," according to Molly Brogan, vice president of public affairs at the National Small Business Association. "Between 2006 and 2007, 368 banks dropped out of the program. Those are a lot of the smaller community banks that are out there on Main Street lending to local businesses." Keep in mind that, according to Brogan, for every $33,000 loaned in this program, a job is created or retained, and you realize how smart it would be for Congress to restore the funding cut from the SBA 7A program.

•SBA disaster assistance loans:While we're talking about the SBA, small companies in the Midwest have to pay much higher interest — with shorter pay-back times — than they did after Hurricane Katrina. And the SBA was awful then. Let's make it faster, cheaper, and easier for small businesses to recover from floods, hurricanes and earthquakes. That's the least we can ask when you're rushing to help Wall Street recover from its own greed.

•Bankruptcy laws:There's going to be a slew of big bankruptcies in the coming years. Right now, small business creditors have to compete with huge corporations to recover any of the money they're owed. It typically takes 18 to 24 months to see pennies on the dollar and costs more in legal fees than it's worth. Let's put small creditors — those owed $100,000 or less — in an "express line" of creditors to get paid fast and fairly.

•SBDC funding:High unemployment means a lot of people will soon become self-employed. Let's help them succeed. Increase funding for the Small Business Development Centers — the best use of taxpayer dollars I've ever seen. While we're at it, let's increase funding for the micro-loan program, helping the smallest of small businesses, which this administration zeroed out each year.

•Estate tax reform, not repeal:Why should those of us who go to work or build businesses pay taxes while billionaires' grandchildren and great-grandchildren don't? A fair estate tax makes it possible for new and small businesses to compete. Estate tax adjustments — exclusions of up to $25 million and adjustments for inflation — will protect small businesses and lower our taxes.

•Energy help:"Less than a million dollars essentially makes up the federal government's focus on small business energy efficiency," according to Brogan. Let's give small companies more assistance in transitioning to energy-efficient equipment, vehicles, and utilities.

I know banks are critical to small business health — hey, I use a line-of-credit — but small business needs direct help too.

Rhonda Abrams is president of The Planning Shop, publisher of books for entrepreneurs. Their newest is Finding an Angel Investor In A Day. Register for Rhonda's free business planning newsletter at www.PlanningShop.com. For an index of her columns, click here. Copyright Rhonda Abrams 2008.