Tuesday night President Obama will deliver his State of the Union address. My guess is he is going to do the same thing in this address that he's done in the past: make promises he has no intention of keeping.
He's going to give us more campaign rhetoric, he will brag about accomplishments that he didn't achieve and he will most certainly pander to the middle class by talking about how important small businesses are.
The past two times President Obama has addressed the union, he has spoken about small businesses repeatedly. So let's look at Obama's track record with small businesses.
First, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, small businesses are responsible for 90 percent of all net new jobs; they are responsible for half the GDP, half the private sector workforce and more than 90 percent of U.S. exports. The Kauffman Foundation found that 100 percent of all net new jobs in the past three decades have come from small businesses. That means that Fortune 1000 corporations have not created one net new job in more than 30 years. Clearly, effective economic stimulus must be aimed at small businesses.
And yet President Obama has directed the large majority of economic stimulus funds to Fortune 1000 firms while virtually ignoring small business.
One of the worst economic moves Obama has made is to decrease small business access to federal contracts and subcontracts. Every year, President Obama's administration diverts hundreds of billions of dollars in federal small business contracts to the world's largest corporations. During FY 2010, 60 of the top 100 companies that received federal small business contracts were actually large businesses, including Lockheed Martin, ManTech and Italian defense giant Finmeccanica.
He shocked the small business world last September by presiding over the official destruction of the Pentagon's minority contracting set-aside programs. This threatens all small business set-aside programs, including set-aside programs for women and veterans.
By signing the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2012, President Obama renewed an anti-small business-contracting program titled the Comprehensive Subcontracting Plan Test Program (CSPTP), which allows the nation's largest prime contractors to circumvent the Small Business Act by not requiring them to turn in subcontracting reports. This test program has been around for more than 20 years and has never been reviewed.
And now, as I have predicted over and over again, Barack Obama is going to close the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) by combining it with the Department of Commerce, which will undoubtedly wind down all federal small business programs. Republicans have tried to close the SBA for thirty years. But now, at the behest of the all-too-powerful corporate lobbyists, who want 100 percent of federal contracts to go to large corporations along with tax loopholes and seats on the President's cabinet, Democrat President Barack Obama is going to shut down the only agency assisting America's 28 million small businesses.
During his campaign, President Obama released a statement that said, "It is time to end the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants." Of course, he has done just the opposite.
Tuesday night we can expect more failed promises. President Obama is one of the most anti-small business presidents in U.S. history and his policies have devastated the middle class economy. His policies have forced millions of small businesses to close their doors and millions more people to lose their jobs.