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RALEIGH (AP) — North Carolina legislators desperate to show they're doing all they can to boost job creation are offering small businesses new tax breaks and other help to try to stimulate new hiring.

"We need to do everything we can to create jobs," said Rep. Bill Owens, D-Pasquotank. "We can't do enough this year to create jobs."

A state House committee on Wednesday approved what its sponsor, House Majority Leader Hugh Holliman, called the General Assembly's first broad attempt to juice job creation by small businesses. The package could cost the state about $80 million over three years, after which the job-creation tax credits expire, according to estimates by legislative fiscal analysts.

The plan would allow businesses with 25 full-time employees or fewer to take a $1,000 tax credit for every job created and kept for three years. Businesses also could get a $250 tax break to help pay the health benefits of each employee earning less than $40,000.

The legislation would expand a tax break for investors in small businesses. Lawmakers also would devote $2.9 million next year to three state programs that provide loans to small companies in rural areas, provide confidential business coaching, and make it easier to get federal technology grants.

Also on Wednesday, the state Senate tentatively approved a proposed annual budget of nearly $19 billion that includes a cut in the highest marginal tax rate for small businesses from 7.75 percent to 6.9 percent — the same as corporate taxpayers.

Separately, Gov. Beverly Perdue has proposed nearly $16 million in tax relief for small businesses. Her idea is for the state to write a $1,000 check to companies that hire workers unemployed for more than 60 days.

"We haven't quite bought into that yet, but it's still on the table," said Holliman, D-Davidson.

Republican leaders have criticized small business incentives offered by Perdue and Democrats as doing little to generate jobs.

A University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researcher whose report last year to the General Assembly found the state's business incentives programs largely ineffective said targeting breaks for small businesses are more likely to get results.

North Carolina's business tax credits haven't translated into the kind of job creation politicians tout because they come "so far after the fact and in many cases are so difficult to take advantage of they tend to be good things to announce but they're difficult to use," said Brent Lane, director of the UNC Center for Competitive Economies at the Kenan-Flagler Business School.

But the proposed small-business tax breaks may reach a broader range of companies and locations and have the potential to deliver a better bang for the bucks, Lane said.

"If they're focusing on firms that are 25 or fewer that is a pool of (companies) much more likely to create the results they're looking for," he said.