Hillary on Small Business
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I think that a candidate’s opinions on small business should be a key factor in deciding whether to vote for them. I spent some time on Hillary Clinton’s website this morning, trying to figure out just what her plan for small business is. There’s a list of key issues that she’s promising to work on, right on the front page. Stuff like helping the veterans and such. The closest Clinton has to a plan for small business on that list — the one that is easy to find and that everyone sees — is her Innovation Agenda. Basically, she wants to direct more money towards research in the hope of developing high-paying technical jobs.
This isn’t a plan for helping out small businesses. So, I kept digging. I managed to find several media releases focused on small business topics. Clinton’s plan seems to focus on the following:
- Give more government contracts to women- and minority-owned small businesses.
- Give more government contracts to small businesses in general.
- End contract bundling — a practice involving putting several small contracts into one bigger contract that small businesses just don’t have the resources to complete.
- Give more government contracts to veteran-owned small businesses, especially those veterans who are service-disabled.
- Require small businesses getting preferential standing for small businesses to meet new net-worth limits.
- Provide small businesses with tax cuts for healthcare.
- Double funding for the Small Business Administration.
Despite being a woman, only two of Clinton’s points really interest me. As long as the government isn’t wasting my tax dollars on endless bureaucracy when awarding contracts, I don’t worry too much about the process, because plenty of small businesses simply don’t offer services that meet the needs of those contracts. In general, I like those last two points, though. I just don’t think that they’ll really happen, at least in entirety. Clinton has a whole laundry list of programs that she wants to give more funding to — especially healthcare initiatives. But without a monumental tax hike, she won’t get all of them. I expect that under Clinton, the SBA would get an increase in funding — but not double. But I’m betting that most of those tax cuts for healthcare would get lost in the shuffle of attempting to set up a nationalized healthcare program.
Tags: Clinton, government contracts, healthcare, sba, small businessRelated Stories
POSTED IN: The US Political Process
4 opinions for Hillary on Small Business
Erika
Apr 28, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Her list sounds impressive, and on the surface, like good initiatives, but I agree with your last point regarding the health care issue. I also wonder where home-based businesses would fall in her proposed changes, and where McCain and Obama stand on the issues that affect small businesses.
thursday
Apr 29, 2008 at 11:36 am
The problem with home-based businesses, as well as freelancers, is that they continue to get lost in the shuffle. From a political stand point, it’s almost as if they aren’t ‘real’ businesses, which I think is shameful. There are ongoing issues with home businesses effectively being double-taxed in some areas, but not enough attention is being paid.
I’m hoping to get up posts shortly on McCain and Obama’s stances, as well.
Barack Obama on Business Issues
Apr 30, 2008 at 9:45 am
[…] is the best option for business owners in the coming election, it seems far more thought out than what we saw from Clinton. Rather than bolstering minority-owned businesses with government contracts, Obama seems to be […]
Electrableu
May 6, 2008 at 12:52 pm
We are primary owners of three restaurant businesses, and I was leaning towards voting Hillary. But I too scoured her site for information directly addressing small business and found little there. The data are staggaring as to just how important small businesses are to the US economy…e.g., accounting for 45% of total US private payroll and creating 60-80% of NET new jobs!! See this site for statistics from SBA:
http://www.sba.gov/advo/stats/sbfaq.pdf
I was truly undecided between Hillary and Barack until the last few days and Obama’s much clearer plans for small business ended up swaying me to vote for him. SEE his small business plan here:
http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/SmallBusinessFINAL.pdf
Includes very important elements of access to capital and tax relief in addition to addressing healthcare and incentivizing innovation. Especially in a down economy, small business needs goverment backed access to capital because traditional banks are VERY risk averse to giving loans to startups on any reasonable terms when we are in a recession…. yet we’ll never get out of a recession without harnessing the unique ability of small business to be an engine of job creation!
Clearly the Republicans “trickle down” focus does not help small startups, and Obama seems to be the only Dem with a real small business plan.
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