According to President Obama’s website Organizing for America, as a candidate he aid this in February 2008:
Ninety-eight percent of all American companies have fewer than 100 employees. Over half of all Americans work for a small business. Small businesses are the backbone of our nation’s economy and we must protect this great resource…..Helping American small business is part of our movement for change and the end of politics as usual.
It’s hard to believe since the policies that are being advanced by the White House today are ruinous to small businesses, and those who are employed (or wish they were employed) by them. Health care policy guru Grace-Marie Turner highlights just how devastating the health care proposal would be to small businesses in this New York Post oped. She writes:
The 1,990-page bill the House leadership unveiled Thursday would impose a dizzying barrage of new regulations on employers, and force them to either provide government-specified health insurance or pay a penalty of up to 8 percent of their payroll.
Even firms that now provide health benefits get slammed — since that coverage may not meet the government’s definition of “acceptable.”
…In other words, small businesses would have to pay more for health insurance than they do now — as well as comply with hefty new record-keeping requirements and audits by federal agents.
Is this really the direction that people want? In a time of recession, with unemployment approaching 10 percent, to make it that much harder for small businesses to survive, let alone hire new workers?