Several small business owners met in Washington last week with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Small Business Administration chief Karen Mills to talk about their struggles during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

The business owners discussed trouble getting credit and government regulations they said are hampering their operations, among other topics.

Woody Hall, the chairman and president of Diversapack, a film manufacturing company operating in several states, said the credit crunch is hampering his company’s growth. “We just opened up a new manufacturing facility employing 50 employees and expected to grow to 150 over the next few years. We basically had no bank financing,” Hall said, according to the Washington Post.

Former chief economist for the World Bank Joseph Stiglitz said exorbitant credit card fees are hurting small businesses and the government needs to address that. According to the Washington Post, Stiglitz said the exchange fee on purchases is “a 2 percent tax on all small businesses. A lot of them have small margins. Imagine you’re got a small margin and you’re giving half of that to banks on exchange fees — how aggravating.”

Geithner acknowledged the government needs to find a way to compel banks to extend more loans to small businesses.

Democrats, Republicans and the White House all have different ideas on how to spend $200 billion in leftover bailout money.

Senate Democrats want some $40 billion spent on small business loans, said Politico.com.

House Democrats, meanwhile, want to see the additional TARP money spent on various economic projects, such as job creation and homeowner loan programs, to hasten a recovery from the recession.

The Treasury Department wants to use the money to pay down the deficit and create an emergency reserve. Senate Republicans want the money returned to taxpayers.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told members of the Joint Economic Committee said the administration is eager to end the TARP program but said the country is still facing huge economic problems. “We are working to put TARP out of its misery, and no one will be happier than I am to see that program terminated,” Geithner said.

Alaska Sen. Mark Begich, one of more than two dozen Senate Democrats who support directing some TARP dollars toward loans for small businesses, said his constituents “saw the big banks walk away with these bailouts and then at the same time ended up with huge salaries,” while small businesses received virtually nothing.

The administration plans to expand a $5 billion tax-credit program intended to aid economically distressed communities across the country, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced Friday.

The president’s 2010 budget plan doubles funding for the Community Development Financial Institutions fund, which helps provide loans to small businesses and consumers in disadvantaged communities that lack access to affordable credit, reported the Wall Street Journal.

The tax credit program, funded by the economic stimulus package, will reward private sector companies that invest in energy, education, health care and manufacturing projects to create jobs in low-income areas. The credit would cover 39 percent of the cost of the investment over a seven-year period.

A new requirement by the Obama administration will hopefully spur the 21 largest banks receiving U.S. government money to lend more to small businesses.

The new rules, outlined in a March 16 Associated Press story, have those banks reporting monthly on how much they lend to small businesses. All others are being called upon to make an “extra effort” to boost small business lending.

The announcements came March 16 as part of a broad package aimed at small business that was being unveiled by President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the AP said. The package also includes reduced small business lending fees and an increase on the guarantee to some Small Business Administration loans.

“We know that small businesses are the engine of growth in the economy, and we absolutely want to do things to help them,” Christina Romer, who heads the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told the wire service. “There are already a lot of things to help them in the recovery package, and some of what will be coming out are the things that were in the recovery package: increasing the SBA loan guarantees, lowering fees.”

Republicans appeared to embrace the efforts, but with some qualifications.

U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor of Georgia said: “We’ve got to do something to help these small-business people. We know that they’re the job creators in this economy. And the problem … I think we’re seeing out of the Obama administration is a lack of focus on how to get things going again.”

The new measures have the government stepping in to buy loans, temporarily eliminate upfront fees of up to 3.75 percent and some processing charges on certain SBA loans typically passed along to borrowers, the AP said. It also increases the government guarantees on certain loans to 90 percent, up from 85 percent for loans below $150,000 and 75 percent for larger loans.