House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), left, and House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) are the main sponsors of the JOBS Act.
(Jacquelyn Martin – AP)
The House approved a measure Thursday designed to make it easier for small businesses to launch initial public offerings, solicit new investors and eventually hire workers.

The JOBS Act (Jumpstart Our Business Startups) passed 390 to 23, with bipartisan support, a move that House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said should compel the Senate to consider the bill “in an expeditious fashion.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said Thursday he would introduce similar legislation next week and “move as quickly as we can” to pass it, but said a highway bill current under consideration in the Senate would create more jobs faster than the House proposal. The two-year, $109 billion deal would create or sustain almost 3 million jobs in the next two years, according to its backers, which include Democrats, Republicans, labor unions and business groups.

The House bills passed Thursday would make it easier for small businesses to go public by lifting SEC restrictions on running advertisements soliciting new investors and permit “crowdfunding” so that entrepreneurs can raise equity capital from larger pools of small investors. Small private companies also would be able to sell up to $50 million in shares as part of a public offering before having to register with the SEC, and could have as many as 1,000 shareholders, up from the current cap of 500.

Four of the bills included in the package had already passed the House by wide margins. And despite its name, Republican leaders couldn’t say how many jobs the bill would help create.

“This is something that you measure later for down the road,” House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told reporters this week. “We know there are jobs that aren’t being created because of the red tape.”

The issue of job creation — a key election year priority — has spawned effusive praise from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue in recent days.

On Monday, the White House said President Obama “is encouraged to see there is common ground between his approach and some of the proposals” in the measure, which is a combination of six separate measures that tweak or update Securities and Exchange Commission regulations dating to the 1960s.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), a frequent Obama foe, called the White House support “good news” for small businesses.

Though most House Democrats voted for the bill Thursday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called the proposal “so meager” and much less effective at creating jobs when compared to transportation funding bills under consideration in the House and Senate.

Regardless, Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), a key backer of the bill, said Republicans would be introducing similarly modest legislation through the rest of the year.

“We’re taking pieces at a time,” McHenry said Tuesday. “One thing I’ve found inside this place is that big bills just collapse. So let’s just focus on small business, that’s the core of job creation. Let’s do a piece of that, and then we’ll come back.”

Follow Ed O’Keefe on Twitter: @edatpost

More from PostPolitics:

Why Newt Gingrich shouldn’t drop out

Dennis Kucinich’s most memorable moments

GOP race takes toll on front-runner Romney

This post has been updated since it was first published.

Article source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/2chambers/post/congresss-new-favorite-four-letter-word-jobs/2012/03/06/gIQAGPzexR_blog.html