Obama's Latest Speech Continues to Ignore Small Businesses

In his latest speech on the economy, President-elect Barack Obama has once again failed to make even a single mention of America's small businesses, which create nearly 80 percent of net new jobs, and employ 50.4 percent of private sector workers.

With regards to the economy, Obama held true to his campaign pattern of significantly downplaying the role small businesses play in driving our national economy. Even one of his top economic advisers, Dr. Laura Tyson acknowledged that the best way to simulate the economy is to direct federal infrastructure funds to small businesses. Tyson is the former Chair of the U.S. President's Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton Administration and is currently an economic adviser to President-elect Obama.

On February 26, 2008, President-elect Obama stated, "Over half of all Americans work for a small business. Small businesses are the backbone of our nation's economy and we must protect this great resource. It is time to end the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants."

The statement was made in response to a series of more than 15 federal investigations, which have found fraud, abuse, loopholes and a blatant lack of oversight in federal small business contracting programs; and have uncovered the diversion of billions of dollars in federal small business contracts to Fortune 500 firms.

Within days of making the statement Obama began to distance himself from it. During the final months of the campaign Obama failed to mention small business issues in campaign speeches, modified his statement regarding the diversion of small business contracts to large corporations on his campaign website, and gave small business issues virtually no priority in his campaign agenda.

When President-elect Obama's Transition Team website, www.change.gov was launched, any mention of Obama's statement to stop the flow of federal small business contracts to large corporations had been removed.

Small business advocates are concerned that President-elect Obama may enact policy and legislation that could be harmful to the nation's nearly 27 million small businesses. Additionally, advocates point to the fact that the Obama-Biden Transition Agenda which is housed on change.gov, contains no new provisions that would significantly impact our nation's small business community.

I am extremely concerned that President-elect Obama doesn't seem to understand that most Americans work for companies with less than 100 employees and that these are the companies that are going to lead our country out of the recession and create a vast majority of all new jobs. So far, he has refused to offer even the most basic proposal to redirect federal infrastructure funds to these companies. It appears that he has no intention of stopping the flow of up to $100 billion in government small business contracts to large corporations. We are concerned that during his first days in office he may try to create loopholes for venture capitalists that will divert even more federal funds away from small businesses. It is going to take a lot more than tax cuts to stimulate this economy. President-elect Obama keeps talking about how important it is that we act immediately, and I couldn't agree more. We would like to see him propose policies next week that would, as he promised on February 26, 2008, stop the flow of federal small business contracts to corporate giants.

Comments

[ran6110]

Nothing you say here matters. Go to Congress.org and find your Congressional representatives and send them your views and opinions (be polite).

http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/congdir.tt

If you don't tell Congress what you want and how you feel they'll just do like they always do and listen to their rich friends, lobbyist and the special interest groups.

When was the last time you saw a member of Congress at the local grocery store and was truly asked for your opinion?

[jimtree]

Want to help a large number of small business and the overall economy? Allow people to take a write off on their taxes for the cost of such labor intensive services as hairdressers, barbers, house cleaners, home improvement companies, house painters, auto repair shops, child care, etc. Such a tax break would help shift demand to such services from the purchase of goods which usually have a low labor imput to cost ratio and which are often imported. These services are usually mom and pop operations with comparitively low income workers. Both such business owners and their workers would be likely to immediately spend any additional income to the benefit of the overall economy. In bad times our tax codes are rewitten to favor investment in capital by allowing accelerated depreciation etc. rather than promoting the use of labor. If current capital goods are not being used because of lack of demand, why would anyone want to invest in more equipment, buildings, etc. In a full employment economy such a bias toward capital makes sense. In bad times labor use should be promoted.

[KillTheMessenger]

Looks like this small business "leader" can not take criticism from a small business employee. That says it all, Mr. Chapman. That says it all.

:-)

[schatsie]

This is a fabulous point... Think about Edison... when he started his work, he did not work for US STeel or any other gigantic corporation.. In fact this is probably an historic anomoly that there are so many large businesses (too big to fail)... I wonder what Michelle Obama takes away from her work at the Hospital of the University of Chicago in terms of Corporate Bureaucracy and if she will ever be willing to go back (but then she was pretty high up) or what her father thought of his job...

[kstuff]

Big Business = Big Campaign Donations.

There is no safety net for small businesses in this country. If the economic environment results in a small business collapsing, the owners cannot even qualify for unemployment. This is ridiculous and unacceptable. The law must be changed, but it never will....

[Peter007]

The government encourages big business. Thats the nature of the beast. Big business means big campaign donations, it means large labor unions and big political machines. Big business writes the laws. They write them so that small business are not able to comply with the new regulations. Nothing can change. Washington is BIG and it only deals with BIG Businesses.

[SharonAustinTX]

President-elect Obama understands the importance of small businesses in our economy. Please stop underestimating him just because he didn't single out a specific group. Give his recommendations a chance.

[ArchAngel]

More and more I have the fear that a new massive "trickle down" Reaganomics program is going to be foisted upon the American people.

That's exactly what we have gotten with the last massive bailouts.