A misleading ‘Obamacare’ poll, courtesy of the Chamber of Commerce and Harris Interactive

U.S. Chamber and Harris Interactive teamed up to lie to public about Obamacare in a recent survey.  Read the story from The Washington Post below that exposes the fraud.

Here are the important points.

--The survey was not a traditional random survey of businesses.  Instead it was an opt in of 499 U.S. Chamber members (think big businesses that hate Obamacare) and 805 non-U.S. Chamber members considered to be small businesses by Harris Interactive.  But since this group was not random and we don’t know what list they were drawn from, they could have all been from the National Federation of Independent Business (the NFIB is another Obamacare-hater group).

--The U.S. Chamber released the results of this poll like this:  “Despite the Administration’s delay of the employer mandate by a year, small businesses expect the requirement to negatively impact their employees. 27% say they will cut hours to reduce full time employees, 24% will reduce hiring, and 23% plan to replace full time employees (30 hours per week or more) with part-time workers to avoid triggering the mandate.”

--The U.S. Chamber wanted the public to believe that 74% of small business owners will be cutting employee hours or not hiring because of Obamacare.  Here is a tweet from Speaker of the House John Boehner, “Study: ‘74% of small businesses will fire workers, cut hours under #Obamacare.’”

--Close analysis of the survey and the results actually show something quite different. The actual number of  “small business” owners or executives in the survey saying that they might reduce employee hours or not hire was only 4.5 to 8.5 percent.  

The Washington Post story concludes, “the Chamber of Commerce got exactly what it paid for in this poll.”  That would be the U.S. Chamber, not those of us that actually represent small businesses.

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The Washington Post
July 31, 2013

A misleading ‘Obamacare’ poll, courtesy of the Chamber of Commerce and Harris Interactive

By Glenn Kessler

We have long warned readers about the perils of relying on data from opt-in Internet polls, especially those that make broad claims about estimating population values. We have given Pinocchios both to President Obama, for relying on an opt-in poll when he claimed that a majority of millionaires support the Buffett rule, and the National Rifle Association, for asserting that an opt-in poll reflected the views of the nation’s police.

This is a yet another case, but with a wrinkle. Here, the polling company, Harris Interactive, and the sponsor, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, presented the data in a highly misleading way — and then made false claims about the type of poll that had been conducted.

The Chamber has been a fierce opponent of the health-care law, a.k.a. Obamacare, and we frequently warn readers they should always be skeptical of polls peddled by partisan organizations. Perhaps it should be no surprise that this poll was released just as the GOP-led House of Representatives scheduled a vote to repeal the law.

Given the way the data was presented, Republican lawmakers thought they had been handed a gift — and ended up with egg on their faces.

Read more.

The G8 nations and small businesses have something in common

The split in business opinion (see story below) on whether the economic world powers represented at the G8 summit should crack down on offshore tax havens that deprive nations of corporate tax revenue is easily understood. 

Organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents multinational corporations, want to protect their big dues paying members from paying their fair share of taxes.  Organizations representing small businesses, like the American Sustainable Business Council, want to protect their members from subsidizing the government services multinational corporations receive from the countries where they avoid paying taxes. 

Multinational corporations are the “takers” and we are the “givers”.  And we’re tired of getting screwed.  Apparently so are the G8 nations based on their declaration this morning on combatting tax avoidance.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I serve as chairman of the American Sustainable Business Council Action Fund.)
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The Wall Street Journal
June 18, 2013

The Morning Risk Report: Companies Divided on Taxation as G8 Zeroes In

The business community is making noise about one of the top agenda items at this week's G8 summit, corporate taxes, but the conversation sounds more like a shouting match than a chorus.

By Christopher M. Matthews

The business community is making noise about one of the top agenda items at this week’s G8 summit, corporate taxes, but the conversation sounds more like a shouting match than a chorus. Dueling letters sent to the White House this month about corporate taxation, and more specifically, cracking down on tax havens, seem to indicate that many companies don’t see eye-to-eye on the issue.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, who’s hosting the leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized nations, has said corporate taxes are a top priority. The issue is one that President Obama, who hopes to reform the tax code, can get behind. “Tax avoidance is as much about countries and country rules as it is about companies, because the loopholes that the companies use are the results of the rules that countries set,” White House international-economic-policy coordinator Carolyn Atkinson, told reporters before leaving for Europe. Obama hopes to translate international support into political capital back home.

He’ll need it, because back in the U.S., there is little consensus on the issue, even among the corporate community that arguably stands to lose the most. In a letter to the White House earlier this month the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, and others expressed concern about aggressive efforts to crack down on corporate tax evasion. “Recent tax initiatives in a number of foreign countries, including several of our G8 partners, appear to be primarily targeting American companies with global operations in the guise of combating tax avoidance, potentially harming both the U.S. companies’ competitive position and the U.S. Treasury,” they wrote in the letter.

Meanwhile, the American Sustainable Business Council, which represents 165,000 businesses, and non-profit group Avaaz sent competing letters to the White House. Avaaz said its letter was signed by 15,000 business owners. “Tax dodging deprives our nation of revenue needed to maintain and modernize the infrastructure and services underpinning a strong economy,” ASBC Executive Director David Levine wrote in the letter. The council also released a poll that found that 85% of small business owners oppose a territorial tax system, which the Chamber advocates and which critics say allows U.S. companies to shield overseas profits from domestic taxation. At least one major U.S. company has put its name on the issue, as Google’s Eric Schmidt said he welcomed the taxation debate (if not exactly advocating a specific change.)

http://stream.wsj.com/story/latest-headlines/SS-2-63399/SS-2-255673/ 

 

The corporate ‘predator state’

In the interest of full disclosure, I serve as the vice chair of the American Sustainable Business Council Action Fund. If you would like to read The Nation story by William Greider in which I am interviewed, click here. Appologies to all my "tree-hugger" friends.
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The Washington Post
March 26, 2013

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

Bipartisan agreement in Washington usually means citizens should hold on to their wallets or get ready for another threat to peace. In today’s politics, the bipartisan center usually applauds when entrenched interests and big money speak. Beneath all the partisan bickering, bipartisan majorities are solid for a trade policy run by and for multinationals, a health-care system serving insurance and drug companies, an energy policy for Big Oil and King Coal, and finance favoring banks that are too big to fail.

Economist James Galbraithcalls this the “predator state,” one in which large corporate interests rig the rules to protect their subsidies, tax dodges and monopolies. This isn’t the free market; it’s a rigged market.

Wall Street is a classic example. The attorney general announces that some banks are too big to prosecute. Despite what the FBI called an “epidemic of fraud,” not one head of a big bank has gone to jail or paid a major personal fine. Bloomberg News estimated that the subsidy they are provided by being too big to fail adds up to an estimated $83 billion a year.

Corporate welfare is, of course, offensive to progressives. The Nation and other media expose the endless outrages — drug companies getting Congress to ban Medicare negotiating bulk discounts on prices, Big Oil protecting billions in subsidies, multinationals hoarding a couple of trillion dollars abroad to avoid paying taxes, and much more.

But true conservatives are — or should be — offended by corporate welfare as well. Conservative economists Raghuram Rajan and Luigi Zingales argue that it is time to “save capitalism from the capitalists,” urging conservatives to support strong measures to break up monopolies, cartels and the predatory use of political power to distort competition.

Here is where left and right meet, not in a bipartisan big-money fix, but in an odd bedfellows campaign to clean out Washington.

For that to happen, small businesses and community banks will have to develop an independent voice in our politics. Today, they are too often abused as cover for multinational corporations and banks. The Chamber of Commerce exemplifies the scam. It pretends to represent the interests of millions of small businesses, but its issue and electoral campaigns are defined and paid for by big-money interests working to keep the game rigged.

An authentic small-business lobby has finally started to emerge, as William Greider reports in the most recent issue of the Nation. The American Sustainable Business Council, along with the Main Street Alliance and the Small Business Majority, are enlisting small business owners to speak for themselves — and challenging the corporate financed propaganda groups such as the Chamber and the National Federation of Independent Business. Their positions often align with those of progressives. They loathe the big banks and multinationals that work to undermine competition.

Greider reports on the antipathy these small business owners have for the big guys. Camille Moran, president and chief executive of Caramor Industries and Four Seasons Christmas Tree Farm in Natchitoches, La., rails against the “Wall Street wheelers and dealers.” They knew, she argues, that they “ would get no sympathy saying that ending the high-income Bush tax cuts would hurt them, so instead they pretend it would hurt Main Street small business and employment. Don’t fall for it. . . . That’s a trillion dollars less we would have for education, roads, security, small business assistance and all of the other things that actually help our communities.”

ReShonda Young, operations manager of Alpha Express, a family-owned delivery service in Waterloo, Iowa: “We’re not afraid to compete with the biggest delivery companies out here, but it needs to be a fair fight, not one in which big corporations use loopholes to avoid their taxes, stick our business with the tab.”

Polls show these aren’t isolated views. The ASBC, the Main Street Alliance and the Small Business Majority sponsored a poll by Lake Research of small business owners. Ninety percent believe “big corporations use loopholes to avoid taxes that small businesses have to pay,” and three-fourths said their own businesses suffer because of it.

The ASBC and its allies have the potential to become what Jamie Raskin, a Maryland state senator, dubbed a “Chamber of Progress,” a small-business voice that is willing to take on the big guys that tilt the playing field.

The possibilities are endless. Wall Street argues for rolling back financial regulation on the grounds that it hurts community and small banks. What if community and small bankers joined the call of conservative Dallas Federal Reserve President Richard Fisher to break up the big banks?

Multinational executives have just launched the “LIFT America” Coalition to push for a territorial tax system that would exempt from U.S. taxes all profits reported abroad. ASBC and its allies could rally small businesses to demand closing down overseas tax havens and imposing a minimum tax on profits sitting abroad, so that they didn’t face a higher tax burden that their global competitors.

In today’s Washington, powerful corporate interests stymie progress on areas vital to our future. Can a right/left, small-business/worker odd bedfellows alliance emerge to counter the predatory interests? We can only hope so.

Katrina vanden Heuvel is the editor and publisher of the Nation magazine, vanden Heuvel writes a weekly column for The Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/katrina-vanden-heuvel-the-corporate-predator-state/2013/03/25/5f637122-9567-11e2-bc8a-934ce979aa74_story.html

 

National Small Business Week

National Small Business Week should be a good time for the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) which claims to represent the country’s real job creators.  Unfortunately for the NFIB, exactly who is pulling its strings now has the attention of the national media.  As John Stoehr writes for Reuters (see below), “A close look at its record suggests that the NFIB uses the politically valuable mantle of small business to pursue an agenda that may take its cues from elsewhere.”

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Reuters
May 22, 2012

Who truly speaks for small businesses?

By John Stoehr

Everyone knows that small businesses hate President Obama’s historic healthcare reform law, right? At least that’s what the nation’s leading small-business advocacy group would have you believe.

Joining 26 states, the National Federation of Independent Business challenged the law all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in March. It claimed the “individual mandate” is unconstitutional and would bankrupt small businesses with unnecessary costs.

Yet while the NFIB claims its multimillion-dollar lawsuit is on behalf of job creators and small businesses everywhere, it’s unclear whether small businesses genuinely support the NFIB position. A close look at its record suggests that the NFIB uses the politically valuable mantle of small business to pursue an agenda that may take its cues from elsewhere.

For one thing, many of its 340,000 members, most of whom employ 20 or fewer workers, have already benefited from the law. According to a March report in the Wall Street Journal, members have seen costs go down thanks to tax credits that were built into the law. Small firms in industries like advertising have also been able to compete with large national companies for talented employees. As one member told the WSJ: “[The NFIB is] doing a very big disservice to their members” by opposing the healthcare law.

For another, the NFIB has a record of lobbying for issues that benefit big businesses, not necessarily small ones. Consider a widespread state tax loophole that lets big-box retailers like Wal-Mart and Home Depot transfer income to out-of-state subsidiaries. This loophole often allows the chain retailers to pay no state income tax, while small businesses do. Yet the NFIB has fought against closing such loopholes.

Moreover, small businesses generally favor some kind of regulation, because such standards often make them more competitive with big companies. The NFIB is opposed to regulation on principle, but it also claims, as many Republicans do, that the threat of regulation on entrepreneurs and job creators – they have a habit of calling it “regulatory uncertainty” – has kept businesses from hiring and thus from stimulating the economy. But observers across the political spectrum say this is a canard. Regulation isn’t preventing businesses from hiring. Poor sales are.

Perhaps it is no surprise that the NFIB fights for issues that the Republican Party as well as big corporations also fight for: deregulation, lower taxes and tort reform. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the NFIB’s political action committee has raised over $20 million since 1998. In 2010, nearly 94 percent of contributions went to Republicans. This year it’s 98 percent. It spent $9.5 million lobbying against the healthcare reform bill in 2010. And last year, the NFIB received $3.7 million from Crossroads GPS, according to Bloomberg. Crossroads GPS is a non-profit with close ties to Karl Rove, the political adviser of George W. Bush.

Given the partisan affiliations and positions, it’s unsurprising that other groups who claim to speak for small business, such as Family Values at Work, cast a gimlet-eye at the NFIB. So do small-business owners and small-business advocacy groups. Frank Knapp, president of the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce, called the NFIB a “small-business pretender” and “lapdog” of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In April, J. Kelly Conklin, a New Jersey cabinetmaker, wrote in the Hill: “Whether we’re talking about health care or taxes (or both at the same time), NFIB always seems to side with the big fellas – big insurance, big banking, big business – not little guys like me. Why? I don’t know.”

Perhaps few do.

What’s more certain is that calling yourself a small-business group while serving the interests of big business has political advantages.

A Gallup poll showed most Americans trust small business to create jobs, more than they do large corporations or the U.S. Congress. That kind of public opinion explains why the major parties can’t agree on anything unless it has something to do with small business.

And it explains why the NFIB, in speaking for small business, hopes to be seen as speaking for the American people – even though, if the Supreme Court overturns the healthcare law, it’s the American people and their trusted small business who may suffer most.

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2012/05/22/who-truly-speaks-for-small-businesses/

Small business delivers again

While the latest job numbers released today aren’t as good as they were earlier this year, the country is still adding private sector jobs.  And small businesses are once again leading the way.

According to the ADP National Employment Report businesses with 1-49 employees accounted for 48.7% of the new jobs.  That compares to businesses with 500 or more employees creating only 3.3% of the new jobs in April. 

We’ve been outperforming big businesses in job creation all year.  In March small 1-49 employee businesses created 47.8% of the new jobs compared to only 10.9% for the over 499 employee crowd.  In February it was 50% to 9.3% and in January it was 56% to less than 2%.

Come on U.S. Chamber.   Quit the phony whining about taxes and regulations and get your big boys investing in jobs in this country instead of hiring K Street lobbyists.

Small biz group outed

The political season is in full bloom and partisan ads are everywhere.  But here is a unique one.  Read the script of this radio commercial and guess which organization produced it.

The start of a new year can bring a sense of a fresh start, a new beginning.
But America’s small-business owners aren’t looking at January for a fresh start. They’re looking at November and Election Day.
They’re fed up with a president and some in Congress who don’t appreciate their sacrifices or the jobs they create.
They’re tired of federal regulators who punish them at every turn.
They’re sick of the assumption that they don’t care about their employees’ health and happiness.
And they’re weary of higher taxes and more red tape.
Small business has had enough of Washington’s class warfare.
It may be January, but these risk-takers -- who pay more than their fair share of taxes, struggle to create jobs and get no respect from their government  -- can’t wait for Election Day to arrive. 

Obviously this is a highly partisan ad targeting primarily the defeat of President Obama and like-minded Congressional Democrats using all the GOP buzz words.  So who is responsible for this radio ad? 

Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry?

How about one of the big super PACs supporting these presidential candidates?   Or was it the National Republican Party or the National Republican Congressional Committee?  Or how about one of the super PACs of those “independent” 527 organizations that work to get Republicans elected like Karl Rove’s American Crossroads?

If you guessed American Crossroads, you are almost correct.

This radio ad features the voice of Dan Danner, president and CEO of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB).  It was produced and distributed this past Friday as that “nonpartisan” organization’s NFIB’s Small-Business Minute. 

I have expressed my feelings about the NFIB before.  I’ve called it a small-business pretender organization numerous times in my blog and have referred to it as a lapdog for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

But how did the NFIB go from never disagreeing with big business to overtly carrying the partisan water for corporate America to defeat the President?

Follow the money.

I always suspected that the NFIB was funded out of the same pockets that support big business organizations like the U.S. Chamber but didn’t have the proof.  Well, now I do and this is where Rove’s super PAC comes into play.

Fred Barnes, executive director of the conservative Weekly Standard and Fox News commentator, spilled the beans in a Wall Street Journal opinion editorial on December 28^th.  Barnes said that the GOP super PAC American Crossroads gave the NFIB $3.7 million in 2010.  Other conservative organizations also got big bucks for the same purpose—to get Republican candidates elected to Congress.   The plan worked in the midterm elections and those conservative organizations and more are getting additional money for this November from American Crossroads.

Now, some other business organizations do endorse candidates but typically based on membership consensus.  Others, like my own South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce, have opted only to provide members comparative information on candidates on specific issues.  Business organizations also receive contributions from outside interests to promote specific issues that are already part of their agendas.

But the NFIB has taken a different route altogether.  It has become a wholly owned subsidiary of
the big business and multinational corporation machine accepting huge sums of money and orders, explicit or implicit, to endorse and work for GOP candidates.

No longer can the media and public accept the NFIB as a national small business organization.  It can be seen now for what it really is—a highly partisan, political organization fronting for big business and multinational corporations to earn a buck—3.7 million bucks at least.

Real job creators getting it done

The lead story for the 7 AM East coast viewers of the Today Show (NBC) this morning was a report by Carl Quintanilla of CNBC.  Quintanilla’s gave an analysis of the good economic news that unemployment in December was down 11% from the previous year and the four week average unemployment rate is at the lowest level since June 2008.

“It’s not corporate America coming to the rescue with new jobs.  It’s mostly small and medium size businesses…,” said Quintanilla.

Then after 8 AM this morning the Labor Department announced that 200,000 new jobs had been added in December and the jobless rate dropped to 8.5%, the lowest in three year. 

While big business and multinational corporations now have numerous organizations in Washington trying to convince Congress that they can’t create jobs unless corporate taxes  are dramatically reduced and profits hidden offshore are allowed to come back home at miniscule tax rates, small and medium size businesses are boosting the economy.

The big business organizations like Tax Reform Coalition, RATE Coalition, WIN America Campaign and U.S. Chamber of Commerce and their members are pouring money into campaign contributions, lobbyists and public relations that they could be using to create jobs. 

Small and medium size businesses, on the other hand, are using their money to hire more workers and increase production. 

Congress should take note.  The real job creators are doing just that.  Corporate America just wants to make more profit without making the investment.

Good news to end 2011

As we end 2011, here are two good pieces of news for small business.

First, I actually have something good to say about the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB).  I haven’t been very charitable to the organization over the years because they always seem to side with the U.S. Chamber on issues.  The NFIB’s complaints about health care reform and regulations keeping small businesses from hiring and their objection to increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans and using the money to decrease the deficit or invest in creating jobs—all are such big-business positions.

But finally this week an NFIB executive dropped the big business mantra about the different challenges facing small business and agreed with what real small business organizations have been saying is the number one problem holding back our hiring.  “The key to everything is cash coming in the front door,” said William Dunkelberg, the chief economist for the NFIB.   

Consensus has arrived in the small business community…lack of consumer demand is our biggest problem standing in the way of creating jobs and economic growth.

The other piece of good news for small business is more data affirming that small businesses are the real job creators, not the millionaire and billionaire’s reporting some small business income or multinational corporations.  Many in Congress are fighting to protect these groups from higher taxes because, the say, it would hurt the “job creators”.

The payroll company Automatic Data Processing, which keeps track of these things, reports that in November businesses with up to 49 workers created 110,000 jobs nationwide.  That compares to just 84,000 new jobs from businesses with 50 to 499 workers and only 12,000 new jobs from employers with 500 or more workers. 

So Happy New Year to all the real job creators—our small businesses!

Millionaire challenge

Tuesday I challenged any real business owner making over $1 million a year to contact me to discuss the proposed millionaire surtax to pay for the President’s American Jobs Act.   (A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows about 64% public approval for both the surtax and jobs plan). 

The U.S. Chamber, National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) and the rest of the millionaire defenders club called The Tax Relief Coalition claim that 80% of taxpayers making over a million a year are “business owners”.   Since there are 4500 South Carolina taxpayers with this kind of income, that would mean that there are 3600 “business owners” making $1 million a year.  Surely one of these people could accept my challenge.

As of today, no one has contacted me and now I know why.  The numbers from the Coalition are phony (what a surprise).  According to the Tax Policy Center only 1 percent of taxpayers reporting any business income make over $1 million a year. 

So there are really only about 45 South Carolinians who could accept my challenge.  And I’m willing to bet that few if any of these 45 actually run a small business.  The rest are passive investors not Main Street business folks.

Never-the-less, the fear mongering on how increasing taxes on the very wealthy will hurt small businesses continues.  An analysis that debunks all the funny math in these arguments can be found in a piece by Zach Carter and Sam Stein in today’s Huffington Post.  Check it out.   

Millionaire defenders club

A procedural vote this week, possibly even today, in the US Senate will determine if President Obama’s American Jobs Act even gets to be debated on the Senate floor.  The bill doesn’t have a chance of passing the Senate because it, as most legislation now, can’t get the 60 votes needed to overcome a GOP filibuster.

The bill is projected to create 1.9 million jobs.  Like it or hate it, it’s still a concrete proposal to do something about the lack of new jobs.  The American public deserves a legislative debate and vote. 

The Senate Democrats changed the funding for the jobs bill to a surtax of 5.6% of any income over $1 million to attract more votes.  As an example, that would be an extra $5,600 in taxes for someone making $1.1 million.  

I predicted this move a while ago simply because it will resonate with most voters regardless of political persuasion.

But not so for the defenders of millionaires.  There is actually a new organization called The Tax Relief Coalition that apparently thinks that people making over a million a year pay too much tax.   The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) are members of the millionaire defender club.

The Coalition claims that 80% of the 2007 taxpayers reporting more than a million dollars in income were “business owners”. 

I’ve talked about this sleight of hand statistics before when the issue was people making more than $250,000 a year.  With a million dollar income benchmark, it is even more true that the vast, vast, vast majority of these folks are only claiming some income from a business investment (they don’t run the business) or are hedge fund managers, K Street lobbyists, or some other very successful professionals.  They’re not Main Street business owners.

In South Carolina there are 4500 taxpayers reporting over a million dollars in income.  If the Coalition is correct, then there should be 3600 “business owners” in this income category. 

I challenge just one of these “business owners” making over a million a year to contact me to discuss this issue.  Just one.   Please!!!!

What is really killing jobs?

What federal regulations have been enacted in the last three years that have been documented to have killed jobs? 

That was the question I asked a Washington Post reporter yesterday when she called.  She was doing a story on the U.S. Chamber’s complaint about “job-killing” regulations.  In response to my question she said that all she has heard from the U.S. Chamber was speculation of future job losses from anticipated regulations by the EPA such as on boilers.

But as I told her, that’s just fear-mongering about what might happen in the future.  While I have no idea how many small businesses will be impacted by boiler regulations, I do know that regulations are not the top concern of small business.

While the reporter and I also talked about some other issues, such as the very troublesome Regulatory Accountability Act that was recently introduced, I left her with a very clear message for her story.

Regulations are not killing jobs.  Lack of consumer demand is killing jobs. 

Hire a vet

This past Friday President Obama challenged business and industry to hire and train 100,000 unemployed veterans or their spouses before 2014.  The President pointed out that there are one million unemployed veterans today with a 13.3% jobless rate for post 9/11 veterans.

To move the challenge along, the President has proposed the following tax credits:

Returning Heroes and Wounded Warrior Tax Credits: A new Returning Heroes Tax Credit for firms that hire unemployed veterans (maximum credit of $2,400 for every short-term unemployed hire and $4,800 for every long-term unemployed hire) and a Wounded Warriors Tax Credit that will increase the existing tax credit for firms that hire veterans with service-connected disabilities who have been unemployed long-term (maximum credit of $9,600 per veteran) and continue the existing credit for all other veterans with a service-connected disability (maximum credit of $4,800).

If this is the first you’re hearing about this, you must be from the small business world.  Just look at who was standing with the President for the announcement—Humana, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Microsoft, AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, Walmart, Lockheed Martin and Honeywell. 

The statistics are very clear.  Small businesses create the most net new jobs.  So where was anybody on the Presidential stage last Friday who truly represented small business?

Oh, the press release claims that the U.S. Chamber will use its network to spread the word to the rest of us.  Even though there are many national small business organizations in this country that would be pleased to support the President in this effort, this administration (and to be fair every administration) just can’t seem to be bothered dealing with them directly when it comes to a high-profile media event.  Instead it turns to the one business organization that on issue after issue demonstrates that it doesn’t represent America’s small businesses.

Trickle-down economics doesn’t work and neither does trickle-down appreciation for small business.

Transparency needed in government procurement

Two U.S. House Committees held a joint hearing yesterday on a potential executive order from the Obama Administration that will try to make sure government contracts are not being awarded because of campaign contributions.

This is a seriously important issue for every small business that would like to provide goods or services to the Federal government. Unfortunately, leading the charge against this transparency is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Before the hearing, I participated in a press conference call sponsored by the Main Street Alliance, American Independent Business Alliance and American Sustainable Business Council. I serve on the steering committee for the latter. These organizations also sent a letter of support to the President.

Reporters on the call included the National Journal, NPR, Bloomberg, Roll Call and the Wall Street Journal. You can listen to the entire press conference call here , read the press release here, read some press reports here, here and here and read my opening remarks on the press call below.

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May 12, 2011 press conference call opening statement by Frank Knapp, Jr.

I’m Frank Knapp, President and CEO of the 5000+ member South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce.

Today I am also representing the American Sustainable Business Council, a growing coalition of business networks and businesses committed to advancing a new vision, framework and policies that support a vibrant, equitable and sustainable economy. The Council brings together the business perspective, experience and political will and strength to stimulate our economy, benefit our communities, and preserve our environment. Today, the organizations that have joined in this partnership represent over 100,000 businesses and more than 200,000 entrepreneurs, owners, executives, investors and business professionals and other individuals.

Clearly an important issue in last November’s election was government accountability. And an extremely important tool for achieving that goal is transparency. The public and business community want, no, we demand to know that government decisions are being made in our best interest not for the benefit of deep-pocketed special interests. Transparency is a uniquely American ideal and is at the heart of every campaign finance disclosure and economic interest law in this country.

That’s the reason the groups here today support President Obama’s proposed executive order on disclosure of government contractors’ political spending. Because the Federal Government is the country’s largest purchaser of goods and services, small businesses demand a level playing field so that we can have the confidence that federal contracts are going to the businesses that can deliver the best products at the lowest cost. That’s a Main Street value and disclosure helps get us closer to that transparency goal.

This afternoon two House committees will hold a hearing on the proposed executive order. The title given to the hearing is, “Politicizing Procurement: Would president Obama’s Proposal Curb Free Speech and Hurt Small Businesses”

That certainly sounds like small businesses were invited to the party but reading the witness list it is clear that the hosts don’t intend to let us in the door.

Now small business organizations like ours are use to having our name used as a front for big business interests. The U.S. Chamber particularly likes to drape its big business agenda in a faux small business cloak.

About this executive order, the U.S. Chamber warns that disclosure will have a chilling effect on free speech. But we can’t ascribe a lofty principle to the motives of that organization when the real intention is to protect the ability of its big, dues-paying members to use their campaign checks to influence the procurement process.

The U.S. Chamber’s Board of Directors includes representatives of more than 50 companies that compiled over $44 billion in contracts with the government in 2010. “Free speech” for these corporations and the U.S. Chamber is just a code phrase for maintaining the influence big campaign money has over our democracy and government.

If a new disclosure rule is enacted, it won’t be small businesses that will be burdened. We are not writing big campaign checks so disclosure won’t be hard. The only contractors who oppose disclosure are the ones with something to hide from the sunlight. The ones that don’t believe in the Main Street value of fair competition. The ones that shudder at the thought of transparency because they know that Americans won’t like what they see and will demand even more reform.

Today you will hear from two small businesses that aspire to do business with government. And you will hear first hand why transparency through disclosure is badly needed.

Free speech that will cost all of us

Transparency in government. That was probably the issue that helped Nikki Haley the most in winning the South Carolina Governor’s election last November.

Who could be against transparency? Who doesn’t want to make sure that government decisions are being made for the good of the taxpayers and not for the good of a deep-pocketed special interest? That is why we have campaign finance disclosure laws and require statements of economic interests for elected officials. It’s all about transparency. Who could be against it?

That would be the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that is opposing a draft executive order that would shine sunlight on the big campaign donations of more than 50 of its members that have received over $44 BILLION in Federal contracts.

The public deserves to know that these corporations aren’t involved in pay-to-play politics. It’s our tax dollars being spent and we deserve to know.

But the U.S. Chamber calls the proposed requirement that Federal contractors disclose direct or indirect campaign contributions over $5000 a chilling effect on free speech. Using the U.S. Chamber’s convoluted logic, all transparency efforts in government should be eliminated because it infringes on free speech (the U.S. Chamber’s code words for big corporations being able to buy political influence to the detriment of the public and small businesses).

The Citizens United Supreme Court decision that allows corporations to make unlimited contributions to elect a politician either on their own or through a third party has made transparency even more important. But the U.S. Chamber is the beneficiary of these big campaign contributions so they are vigorously fighting back.

Tomorrow the House Committee on Small Business and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will hold a hearing on this issue. The title of the hearing tells which side the House majority is on—“Politicizing Procurement: Would President Obama’s Proposal Curb Free Speech and Hurt Small Businesses”.

Once again small business is being used as a front to protect big corporate greed and power.
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For the record on transparency:

“I think what we ought to do is we ought to have full disclosure, full disclosure of all of the money that we raise and how it is spent. And I think that sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

- John Boehner, Meet the Press, Feb. 11, 2007, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17065119/print/1/displaymode/1098/

"Why would a little disclosure be better than a lot of disclosure?"
- Mitch McConnell, Washington Post, May 13, 2010 (the quote is from “the last major fight over regulating money in politics”), http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/12/AR2010051205094.html

Create jobs here, not there

When I heard that President Obama was going to address the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and all the news commentators said that it was his effort to get back in the good graces of the business community, I cringed.

The U.S. Chamber doesn’t represent the business community. It represents the BIG and multi-national business community. The President has done a good job for small business (even if many still don’t realize it).

So I was relieved and pleased to hear that the President had this message earlier today for the U.S. Chamber:

Now is the time to invest in America. . . If we as a nation are going to invest in innovation, that innovation should lead to new jobs and manufacturing on our shores. The end result of tax breaks and investments cannot simply be that new breakthroughs and technologies are discovered in America, but manufactured overseas.

Corporate (not small business) profits are soaring but as Harold Meyerson points out the huge profits for big business are not being invested here at home. The GEs, Apples, Intels and Hewlett-Packards and other big businesses of their ilk (once America’s business icons to be admired), now create more jobs in other countries than they do in the United States.

Meyerson writes in The American Prospect:

With each passing year, and even more so during the recession, America's leading corporations grow more and more decoupled from the American economy. Their interests grow increasingly detached from those of our workers, our consumers -- and our economic future.

Making this situation even worse is that we give tax incentives to big manufacturers to export jobs. Our foreign competitors must roll in laughter as our American dollars fuel their job growth.

Obviously, this must end.

This week I’ll be in D.C. talking about the need to promote American manufacturing, truly a small business sector in South Carolina. I’ll be on a panel at the Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference and the next day meeting with Department of Labor Secretary Hilda Solis.

If we’re going to invigorate manufacturing in this country to create the jobs we need, our efforts should be targeted to small manufactures. If the big boys want to keep sending jobs out of the country, they need to start doing it without the American taxpayer’s help.

Big-business hooker

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission released its 576 page report yesterday on the causes of the great recession. They interviewed over 700 people with first-hand knowledge of how the crisis came to be.

“Avoidable” concluded the Commission. Our regulators failed us. The lack of appropriate regulatory oversight failed us. Excessive Wall Street risk-taking failed us. Big business corporate mismanagement failed us. From the Clinton administration until 2008 we were on track to the inevitable collapse of our economy.

One non-cause of the crisis according to the Commission—the government’s efforts to promote homeownership. Congratulations to the Commission for not blaming the victims.

Immediately upon the release of the Commission’s report (and probably before reading it) the U.S. Chamber of Commerce went on the attack. It called the report a “missed opportunity to produce an objective, non-partisan look at how to strengthen our financial regulatory system”.

Now there’s an oxymoron. The U.S. Chamber advocating objectivity, non-partisanship and a strong financial regulatory system.

The reality is that the U.S. Chamber has been paid very well to oppose financial regulations for a long time. Since the financial crisis it has fronted for the same financial industry that drove our economy over the cliff. It opposed the much-needed Wall Street reform legislation that passed last year and is doing everything it is getting paid to do to water down the new regulations.

If I had about $50 million and was willing to deal with the principle-less U.S. Chamber, I could get them to support the Commission’s report. It’s just business to them. No different from a high-priced hooker telling the customer, “Show me the money and I’ll do anything you want.”

The newly thankful for health insurance

There are thousands and thousands of employees across the country who have something to be very thankful for this Thanksgiving—new employer sponsored health insurance.

According to Bernstein Research there has been a 14 percent increase in businesses with fewer than 10 employees offering health insurance to their workers compared to last year. The authors of the study credit the business health insurance tax credits that went into effect this year as part of the new health care law.

Small businesses are not being burdened by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). They and their employees are benefiting from it.

Maybe that’s why health care reform—even after the health insurance industry paid the U.S. Chamber $86 million last year to convince Congress and the public that reform was evil socialism; and the U.S. Chamber’s lap dog, the National Federation of Independent Business, warned the country ad nausea of non-existent small business mandates in the legislation—wasn’t the all powerful voter issue predicted by Senator Jim “Waterloo” DeMint . Only 17 percent of voters mentioned health care as one of their issues affecting their vote. The economy was the dominant issue.

But even with this good news of more small businesses now being able to afford health insurance because of the ACA tax credits, the repeal of the reform is still being threatened by the empowered GOP in Congress.

What they are proposing is a $4 billion tax increase on all the small businesses that are and will be using the tax credits.

We didn’t vote for that either, did we?

Happy Thanksgiving!