No help for small business

At yesterday’s Palmetto Freedom Forum in Columbia, SC, the candidate who will never be President, New Gingrich, made the most important observation about the economy.  He said that if we don’t put in place an effective action now (not when he’s President in 2014), we are in danger of going back to a severe recession.

The operative words were NOW and EFFECTIVE.

Considering that it is universally accepted that most net new jobs will come from small businesses, what did the GOP Presidential candidates propose yesterday to create jobs?  Give big business, those Romney persons who are sitting on trillions of dollars instead of hiring, more money of course.

How?

-Dramatically cut corporate income taxes (the taxes small businesses do not pay because we are not corporations).

-Give U.S.-based multinational corporations a tax holiday for bringing (repatriating) their profits they have been keeping off-shore (to avoid paying U.S. taxes) back at low or even a no-tax rate.  (We tried this once in 2004 and it failed to create jobs.)

The candidates also wanted to kill Dodd-Frank, the financial reform legislation meant to protect the country from another self-induced banking recession.   (However, Romney did admit that some regulatory reform especially in the mortgage industry was necessary.)

Oh , the candidates did have a smattering of other job “creation” ideas but none, with one exception, would directly put more money into the economy to create consumer spending—the “now” and “effective” approach we need.  The exception was Ron Paul who called for bringing all our military troops home from overseas and letting them spend their money here to boost our economy.

Surprisingly not one of the candidates mentioned House majority leader Eric Cantor’s proposal to give small business owners a 20% tax cut on their earnings.  And none came anyway close to calling for a direct government infusion of money into the economy such as increasing spending on infrastructure, something that President Obama and most business organizations large and small support.

Unfortunately, Rick Perry was not at this event due to the wildfires in Texas.  But as for Romney, Bachman, Paul, Gingrich and Cain; getting money to Main Street to help our small businesses was nowhere on their radars.