WHAT SMALL BUSINESS NEEDS FROM THE NEWLY ELECTED PRESIDENT & CONGRESS

By Todd Stottlemyer

After a long and history making campaign, the people have spoken and elected our first African-American president. We offer our congratulations to President-elect Obama and all the successful candidates around the country.

It’s clear that the overriding issue in this election was the state of the economy, especially after the crisis in the financial markets. But now that action has been taken to stabilize the credit markets we need to look to the needs of those who will drive the economic recovery: small business owners. The good news is, both candidates focused on small business in the last few weeks of the campaign, especially when it came to healthcare and tax issues.

With that in mind, the National Federation of Independent Business has developed a 10 point plan designed to help Main Street businesses do what they do best: run their businesses efficiently and effectively, and continue to create jobs.

The plan is a combination of legislative actions that will either lower the cost of running a small business, or prevent Congress from piling on new costs during an economic downturn—in other words, the worst possible time. The action steps include:

  • Pass the Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) Act, which would lower the cost of health insurance by providing tax credits, market pooling, ratings reforms and administrative cost savings.


  • Pass health information technology legislation to streamline record keeping, reduce errors and create efficiencies in the healthcare system that cut costs.


  • Make the current marginal rate tax cuts permanent, keeping individual and sub-S tax rates low.


  • Make small business expensing permanent at a level of $250,000 per year while ensuring that expensing and bonus depreciation provisions don’t penalize small business owners who are unable to place new equipment in service in the same year the purchase is made.


  • Eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax.


  • Enact permanent federal estate tax relief with a $5 million per person exemption and a tax rate no higher than the top marginal rate.


  • Create a small business net operating loss carry back extension that allows small business owners to offset taxes paid in previous years with this year’s losses.


  • Defeat the Employee Free Choice Act, also known as card check legislation, which would significantly raise the cost of wages and benefits for newly unionized small businesses.


  • Defeat any attempts to expand the Family Medical Leave Act to smaller businesses which can’t afford to pay for the required leave.


  • Defeat any attempt to require small businesses to offer paid sick leave to employees.


It’s an ambitious agenda for the next Congress. And it’s true that some pro-small business legislators on Capitol Hill were defeated in this election. But we will reach out, engage and educate new members of Congress by continuing to tell the small business story.

It’s sure to be an active Congress after Jan. 20. Let’s hope that policymakers remember the words uttered on the campaign trail, understand challenges that small business owners face, and then act quickly to ensure that those businesses continue to thrive and grow in 2009 and beyond.

 

Todd Stottlemyer is president and CEO of the National Federation of Independent Business in Washington, D.C.

 

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