There is a lot of discussion these days about ‘buying local’. There is even a national organization with chapters which promotes it (along with a lot of other local initiatives) Local Economies . American Express just sponsored, for the second year, a national event called “Small Business Saturday” to encourage people to buy with small businesses (not only local; and as an incentive, they offered a credit off the customer’s bill for buying at a small business).

But, when it comes time for us, as consumers, to actually find local businesses, it might not be so easy.

Nearly nine months after its formation, a $30 billion government fund to foster small-business lending has yet to pay out a single dime, even as the nation struggles with traumatic levels of unemployment.

With unemployment still high and job growth anemic, finding jobs for Americans should be the top priority of our elected officials. To deal with this serious crisis, I propose the creation of a National Cooperative Administration to encourage the creation of worker-owned businesses.

I am here in Alexandria VA at an event being put on by FDIC to look at small business lending issues. Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke is a panelist as well as several members of Congress, bankers and of course, a representative from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who represents small business about as much as bin Laden represents U.S. national security interest.

While everyone’s attention is on the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, there are far more nefarious sections that demand the public’s attention and action.

The Small Business Jobs Act, poised to pass the Senate this week, contains provisions that will do more to damage small businesses than all the decent provisions combined. The bill is another swing-and-a-miss for Democrats trying to bolster their small business creds…

Around 11am et, the Senate will begin a complicated series of votes on the small business bill. What’s their deal? They actually have to do with some reporting requirements passed in the Affordable Care Act. As a pay-for in the bill, the ACA mandated 1099 reporting for all businesses on certain transactions over $600. The idea here is that companies routinely don’t report such purchases, and summarily don’t pay taxes on them. So basically, the amendment from Johanns eliminates this requirement, and allows businesses to freely evade taxes again. The Nelson amendment would exempt small businesses with less than 25 workers from the requirement, and raise the threshold on transactions to $5,000.

On a conference call about the small business bill today, Senators Jack Reed (D-RI) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) both strongly supported the Bush tax cut plan put forward by the President, and rejected any proposal for extending the tax cuts at the high end. They also said that the votes look to be there for the small business package when it gets a vote next week, though anything else in the September work period would be very difficult.

Today’s announcement of a $200 billion dollar program to allow businesses to write off their capital expenditures up front in 2010 and 2011 at full cost (which would only cost $30 billion in the long run) hasn’t received the widest reception from the economic profession.

Karl Rove’s money-laundering shop has ordered up a series of ads attacking Democratic Senate candidates. But despite them clearly being electorally focused, Rove’s team tries to make them “issue ads” by adding a bill unrelated to the spots in the end plate.