Lawmakers return to Capitol Hill this week after the summer recess, and providing assistance to small businesses tops their to-do list. Their goal: Help small businesses, and boost the economy, according to CNNMoney.com

The Senate will consider two proposals right off the bat.

The broader measure is the Small Business Jobs Act, which includes a $30 billion fund to spur lending and $12 billion worth of tax breaks. The Senate will also decide whether to repeal a law provision enacted as part of health-care reform that will require small businesses to file millions of new tax forms — a provision House Minority Leader John Boehner  calls “job killing.”

Main Street needs the help: Credit remains hard to come by, and without it, hiring is suffering. In fact, small business hiring has been on a downward slide for the past 2 1/2 years.

And both the number of small business loans and the total value of those loans have declined, according to data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The number of loans has dropped by 17.8 percent since the second quarter of 2008 and the total value of those loans plunged by $60 billion to $650 billion.

Large firms can get access to credit by selling stock and corporate bonds, but most Main Street businesses don’t have such an option.

“Small businesses, which are more dependent on bank lending to meet their financing needs, are still experiencing problems accessing credit due to the continued tight lending standards and banks and have been unable to increase hiring,” the congressional Joint Economic Committee wrote in a report released Monday.

With the unemployment rate still flirting with double digits, pressure is mounting on Washington to create jobs.