Here?s a big mystery, a Republican Conundrum: why do most small business people support the Republican Party when that party seems bent on attacking American small business?Case in point: The American Enterprise Institute, a prominent conservative think tank, has mounted a campaign to abolish the Small Business Administration and terminate all subsidies aimed at small business. This is the theme of a scathing article (?Small Firm Idolatry?) by Veronique de Rugy, a research fellow at the AEI. According to her analysis, SBA statistics showing the importance of job creation by small businesses is faulty, as are other small business statistics, and the entire SBA should be replaced by lower tax rates for all businesses, and reduced regulations.
Just what is The American Enterprise Institute? Among its personnel are Lee Raymond, CEO of Exxon-Mobil; Newt Gingrich, former Congressman; Lynne Cheney, wife of the Vice-President; Robert Bork, failed nominee for the Supreme Court; and Richard Perle, one of the neo-con crafters of the Iraq War, to name a few. Among the alumni of AEI are such luminaries as Richard Cheney, Vice-President of the United States and Antonin Scalia, Supreme Court Justice. The organization is well funded by such conservative stalwarts as the Coors Foundation, Philip Morris, Kraft, and Scaife? all die-hard right wing money machines. AEI (which has evolved over many years from being a simple free market, productivity-oriented group into being dominated by the Darwinian jungle ideals of huge global corporations) has proved very effective in the past in placing its people in important positions in Republican administrations, and then effecting whatever policy changes it promotes.
Another case in point: Bush has regularly and routinely cut the Small Business Administration staff and its programs which benefit the 23 million American small businesses. He has raised fees for SBA loans at a time when the Federal Reserve deliberately kept interest rates low in order to jump start the economy, and in his new budget he axes the microloan and microloan technical assistance programs which are especially beneficial to minority and women-owned businesses. The trend to oblivion is clear. Contrast this with the Bush system of generous tax benefits and incentives for mega oil companies and for Big Pharma, and tax breaks for repatriation of overseas profits by giant global firms.
Lloyd Chapman, President of the American Small Business League has pointed out that, notwithstanding Ms. De Rugy?s statements, ?Small businesses are the drivers of the U.S. economy... if Republicans succeed in eliminating small business contracting programs, the $119 billion currently directed to small firms will all go to Fortune 500 companies.?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that 98 percent of American companies have fewer than 100 employees, and firms with fewer than 500 employees account for 65 percent of private sector net employment growth. The SBA states that it is small businesses which employ over half of all Americans; there are some 4 million minority-owned businesses and 6.5 million women-owned businesses in the United States, and almost all of them are small.
Apparently that is what bothers the modern American Enterprise Institute and its Bush adherents: small, and especially minority, and women-owned. Besides, there is that $119 billion going to pygmies when the big boys think they deserve it. Mr. Chapman adds plaintively ?I don?t understand why Republican small business owners aren?t aware of this.? He is shocked the attacks on small businesses are not being opposed by the victims.
Shocked? Why? Every day we have more evidence that George W. Bush is utterly the creature of, and the creation of, globalized mega business, which is interested only in enhancing its own bottom line and feasting off the succulent assets of the American economy--- and the hell with
America and Americans.
I contend it is past time for the loyal opposition party to bring all this to the notice of the small to mid-size business owners. Republican rhetoric excusing upper-bracket tax cuts because "the investor class" creates jobs is about as phony as it gets when they simultaneously de-fund the SBA--- since it is small business that creates the jobs here in CONUS (despite what Ms de Rugy implies in her article).
Moran also whipped the vote among Dems on behalf of the Republican leadership.
Moran and Republican Jerry Weller have now co-introduced legislation to remove tariffs on Sri Lankan imports. Cheap dresses that you might buy at Wal-Mart, that kind of stuff.
Do you realize that it is not just the Republicans who are promoting globalization? Moran and some other Dems are doing it also.
RK is interviewing Moran tomorrow. It would be great if RK saw fit to ask Moran about globalization in general and Moran's CAFTA and Sri Lanka legislation in particular.
Then again, one can always just retreat to make believe land and complain about the Republicans and only the Republicans. That absolves Moran and the other turncoat Dems and encourages them to commit further economic crimes.
Having Moran in the Democratic Party is like having a creepy uncle around whose activities no one likes to talk about.
great post, Teddy. Good lookin' out.
William
I rather got the impression there was resentment toward what she considers frills or the waste, of helping small firms, and that the giants should be enabled more easily to scoop up any innovative ideas, and be the recipients of all those billions wasted on little guys, most of whom were going to fail anyway in her opinion--- thus hamstringing small family startups and non-cutting edge regular small businesses in the local economy.
When I posted this article on DailyKos, one thoughtful reader said he foresaw an evolution of corporate law so as to favor a slicker kind of Acquisition and Merger, and a new categorical division into two types of corporations... rather what I have been calling the coming age of corporate feudalism, for want of a better term.
I think Progressives should be addressing this under-the-radar evolution going on unnoticed right before our eyes, an aspect of globalisation as yet unnamed and unstudied. It certainly seems that the Bushies are helping the evolution along, so it must be profitable for them.
As an employee of a woman-owned small business, I'm aware of the type of 'affirmative action' we benefit from in contracting.
But our company (any many other small ones like it) exist because we execute a service no one else was currently providing. Employees of larger companies saw an opportunity to bring a capability to the defense world with the skills they had built up in their current jobs, so they formed a company and did it.
If we stifle small business, who will take these risks in the future?
We work in the business of the nation's defense, and particularly with technology - areas whose needs change rapidly, and require flexible organizations to respond to those demands.
Why would we make it MORE difficult?
Our office deals with multiple possible technology solutions for a wide range of pressing military problems.
Besides the fact that we are a small business helping that effort, almost ALL of the thousands of proposals we see are from small businesses.
Small businesses are the only ones who can react quickly enough to solve the new, emerging problems the defense community has to deal with.
Why would the Administration want to choke them off?