Sunday, July 01, 2007

Reservist Business Owners Are $uffering When They Get Back

When one signs up to be in the Army Reserves, the attraction is that time served is minimal. Many Reservists have businesses and lives based on being here, not over in Iraq. Now that many are serving over there for fifteen months at a time, their home lives are wrecked when they get back. You would think that the government would help them out when transitioning back stateside, but they don't.

From Reuters:

Under U.S. law, reservists who work for someone else -- a private firm or local, state, or federal government -- have safeguards to get their jobs back. Yet those who work for themselves have no such guarantees.

With demands for more relief, the SBA recently began a pilot loan targeted to veterans, reservists and their spouses.

Kerry hailed it as a "good first step," but urged that its double-digit interest rates be lowered and said government must do more to publicize this and other such efforts.


William Elmore of the SBA claims it isn't their fault. When Congress wrote the legislation back in 1999, it wasn't set up to help the returning Reservists in a measurable way. That is why Senator Kerry is proposing to fix the system. His proposed legislation would give grants of up to $25,000 and loans of up to $100,000 without any collateral. There are over 60,000 self-employed reservists and they need this assistance desperately. President Bush likes to talk about supporting the troops (often without backing up the statement with good policies) so this would be a good thing to help pass quickly, giving our brave men and women in the Reserves their lives back when they return.