Sen. John Thune’s amendment to target tax incentives to small businesses by redirecting unspent money in the $862 billion stimulus bill failed on the Senate floor Wednesday.

It died 38-61.

In a conference call a few hours before the vote, Thune, R-S.D., said his bill would encourage small businesses to invest in new capital and hire workers.

Using stimulus money makes sense because not only has it been slow and untargeted, much of it remains unspent, he said.

Small businesses create 60 to 80 percent of all new jobs, but less than 1 percent of the stimulus funds have been dedicated to them in the form of tax relief, Thune said.

Since the bill was enacted, more than 3.3 million jobs have been lost and unemployment stands a 9.7 percent.

“True job creation doesn’t happen when the government adds jobs; it grows when small businesses are given the incentives to thrive,” he said.

He said his proposal would not have added to the national debt nor would it have involved more borrowing.

Meanwhile, Thune said despite the fact that President Obama has offered to include four Republican ideas in the health care reform bill the package does little to address the issue of costs, which most Americans worry about.

“Nothing he has suggested changes the basic contours of the bill,” Thune said.

It will raise taxes, lead to massive cuts in Medicare and increase insurance premiums, he said.

While it extends coverage to 30 million Americans, 23 million would still be uncovered, he said.

“They do it at an incredible cost to the economy,” Thune said of the bill.

Obama called Wednesday for an up-or-down vote on health care reform and said he supports the controversial approach known as reconciliation that would only require 51 Senate votes instead of 60.

Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., also wants a vote.

“Working families are finding it nearly impossible to dig any deeper into their pockets to pay for out-of-control health care costs,” he said in a statement. “In the months since the House and Senate began moving forward on reform, the number of uninsured has grown and South Dakotans have seen their premiums skyrocket.”

The same kind of up-or-down vote has been done more than a dozen times by both parties for such initiatives as the Children’s Health Insurance Program and COBRA insurance, he said.

Republicans want to see provisions that would mean tax credits for people to buy their own insurance and allow people to buy insurance across state lines, Thune said.

Farmers, ranchers and other small business owners should be able to be in health plan pools with larger groups, and there should be medical malpractice reform to lessen the practice of defensive medicine, he said.

Reconciliation would be a backdoor approach that would “jam” the health care bill through in defiance of the will of the American people, he said.

Like other reform efforts over the years, he thinks it makes sense to have bipartisan support.

“We’ll see what happens, but I think it’s a big mistake,” Thune said of reconciliation.



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