President Obama unveiled plans to aid small businesses by increasing their loan guarantees

The Obama administration said on Monday that it would try to ease a credit squeeze afflicting small businesses by buying up to $15 billion of securities that are linked to small-business loans.

Speaking to an audience of small-business owners at the White House, President Obama said the actions would encourage lenders to make more money available to entrepreneurs and spur renewed economic growth in a vital sector of the economy.

“Today, too many entrepreneurs can’t access the capital to start, operate, or grow their business,” Mr. Obama said. “Too many dreams are being deferred or denied by a form letter canceling a line of credit.”

On a day when his administration was trying to head off any political damage from the news of bonuses being paid to executives of American International Group, the announcement provided Mr. Obama a platform to stress that the government is helping mom-and-pop operations as well as giant financial institutions and corporations.

The administration’s plan included provisions increasing loan guarantees for small business to 90 percent of the loan value to encourage banks and other lenders to extend credit, and waiving the Small Business Administration’s loan fees and requiring banks that received federal bailout money to report each month how much small-business lending they did.

Mr. Obama said the small-business credit squeeze was linked to the overall credit crisis, which, he said, “began when some banks bundled and sold mortgages in complex ways to hide risk and avoid responsibility.”

“The collapse of these mortgage-backed securities and other complex financial instruments froze the credit markets, including the markets that help small businesses access loans to cover payroll, to purchase supplies, or to expand in ways that create new jobs,” he said.

The White House said in a statement that the Obama administration believed that the country’s “economic recovery will be driven in large part by America’s small businesses” and noted that small companies had generated some 70 percent of net new jobs annually over the last decade.

Administration officials said that by the end of March the Treasury Department would begin making direct purchases of securities backed by loans guaranteed by the Small Business Administration. Even small businesses with good credit histories had lost the ability to borrow, administration officials said.

The initiatives are intended to encourage new lending to creditworthy small companies by making loans more attractive. In addition, the administration wants to ease the secondary market for loans backed by the Small Business Administration, which has been frozen since last fall.

During a conference call with reporters, administration officials said they expected that most of the $15 billion would be used to buy newly issued securities, at prices high enough to attract sellers, but not so high that taxpayers would be overcharged. Officials played down fears that taxpayers could end up rescuing small businesses that might be better left to sink. A senior administration official said that delinquencies among small businesses would decrease when the economy turned around.

As part of the administration’s small-business initiative, the I.R.S. announced Monday that small businesses with deductions exceeding their income in 2008 could use a new net operating loss tax provision to get a refund of taxes paid in prior years. The provision, enacted as part of the economic recovery plan, enables small businesses with a net operating loss in 2008 to elect to offset this loss against income earned in up to five prior years, instead of the usual two-year limit.

“The new net operating loss provisions could throw a lifeline to struggling businesses, providing them with a quick infusion of cash,” said the I.R.S. commissioner, Doug Shulman, in a statement. “We want to make it as easy as possible for small businesses to take advantage of these key tax benefits.”