WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats plan this week to consider a $30 billion small-business lending program that Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley says is a common-sense answer to the continuing credit crunch. Many small businesses poised to expand are struggling to secure loans because community banks are facing tough capitalization requirements. The
WASHINGTON — Times are still hard but Don Brostoski is ready to expand his Portland business if only he can find a bank willing to make a loan. “If I could receive capital easier, yes, it would allow me to expand our business tremendously,” said Brostoski, president and founder of
BEND, Ore. — The extension of long-term jobless benefits took a big step toward reality Tuesday, as time is running out for more than 2.5 million unemployed Americans who rely on them to survive. A bill that would extend the deadline to file for those benefits until November was approved
Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley has introduced a clear plan to reduce America’s dependence on oil — a plan with specific timelines, real accountability and a program for building the clean-energy economy. Merkley’s plan is doable — feasibility has never been the issue in America’s long history of big talk and
The federal Historically Underutilized Business Zone (HUBZone) program may be a mess as public policy, but it’s hard to beat as a source of unintended consequences. A good argument could be made for killing the program entirely. But as a minimum, Congress ought to follow Sen. Jeff Merkley’s lead and
Almost two years after the bottom fell out of the American financial system, the economy has stabilized. Congress has done a lot to turn the recession around and prevent another financial crisis. But we cannot give in to complacency or fatigue. Millions of Americans are still out of work, and
In the year and a half he’s been in the U.S. Senate, ever since banking committee chairman Chris Dodd recruited him for the committee, Jeff Merkley has been working on the financial overhaul bill. He became a prominent figure in the fight, with heavy attention to the Merkley-Levin amendment to
Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) — the two top advocates of strengthening the “Volcker rule” throughout the Wall Street reform debate — declared a “victory” Friday after negotiations Thursday led to the incorporation of stricter language into the final bill. But the news appears to be an
The financial reform agreement reached as dawn broke Friday includes a provision written by Sen. Jeff Merkley prohibiting banks from using their own money to make speculative trades and making deals that bet against their own customers. But the language that Merkley and Sen. Carl Levin spent months selling to
Every president since Richard Nixon has embraced the goal of energy independence for the United States. Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley has prepared a plan for actually achieving that goal by 2030. It’s likely that elements of the plan are overly ambitious, or could be implemented only at unacceptable economic or
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