Do you know who creates ninety percent (that’s 90% if you prefer numerals) of the net new jobs in America? Small businesses, and by small businesses I mean businesses with less than 100 employees. These small businesses represent 98% of all employers, and provide roughly one half of all the jobs in America. They also provide 90% of all of exports by the United States.
I’ll bet a lot of small businesses are owned by people who vote for Republicans. Well, folks I have some news for you. Republicans are not your friends.
In 2008, the last year of the Bush Presidency the budget for the Small Business Administration (SBA) was $569 MILLION. That was a decline from the high water mark of the Clinton years when the SBA’s budget was 1.1 BILLION. Bush spent his eight years in office cutting the SBA’s budget by more than half, and running off its most best and most experienced employees. Bush even told his first SBA administrator that he intended to eliminate the SBA entirely by the end of his first term. Even though he wasn’t able to accomplish that goal, he did plenty of damage to the SBA during his two terms in office. Under his “leadership” the SBA was involved in numerous instances of “waste, fraud and abuse” (sound familiar?). For example, investigations by the General Accounting Office (GAO) discovered one scandal where over $300 million in funds supposed to be allocated to legitimate small businesses were funneled illegally to large corporations:
GAO identified $325 million in set-aside and sole-source contracts given to firms not eligible for the 8(a) program. Most were obtained through fraudulent schemes. In the 14 cases GAO investigated, numerous instances were found where 8(a) firm presidents made false statements, such as underreporting income or assets, to either qualify for the program or retain certification.
This is what the leader of one small business advocacy and watchdog group had to say about what President Bush and Republicans in Congress did to the SBA (via Mother Jones report, dated March 27, 2009):
Chris Gunn, a spokesman for the American Small Business League, has been bird-dogging the SBA for years. He says that since the underfunded and overwhelmed agency was gutted by the Bush administration, “it’s not necessarily surprising that we see this amount of fraud and abuse.”
When the Obama administration took office it found the SBA in shambles. However, by 2010, with the help of Democratic control of both house of Congress, it raised the budget 31% to $824 million and also provided a one time increase of $962 Million in supplemental stimulus funding for a total of 1.79 Billion dollars. Not surprisingly loans to small businesses increased dramatically in 2010 across the United States, even in Red States:
Loans in Georgia made through a U.S. Small Business Administration program offering 90 percent loan guarantees to lenders and eliminating fees for borrowing companies increased by nearly 52 percent. […]
The higher loan percentage guarantees and fee elimination were continued for the last three months of 2010 after President Barack Obama signed the Small Business Jobs Act, which extended those incentives. […]
The loans made under the SBA’s programs from February 2009, when the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was signed, through the end of 2010 carried 90 percent loan guarantees, up from 75 to 85 percent guarantees, and no borrower fees, instead of 2 to 3 percent fees on the loan amount. […]
Nationally, the SBA said it approved more than $10.3 billion in loan guarantees in the last three months of 2010, which supported more than $12 billion in loans. The guarantees were funded by $505 million in subsidy funds provided during the period.
Total business loans in 2010 to all companies regardless of size was $32.47 Billion. Thanks to Democrats and President Obama, a significant amount of those loans went to small businesses, with no fees and guaranteed up to 90% by the Federal Government. Even after the Republican sweep of the 2010 mid-term election, President Obama proposed an increase of 19.5% to the SBA’s budget to $985 MILLION. Unfortunately, with Republicans in control of the House of Representatives and ever ready to filibuster in the Senate, the hope of more stimulus funding for small business is now dead.
In fact, Republicans still want to kill off the SBA and harm our nation;s true “Job Creators,” small businesses. Need an example? How about the bill sponsored by North Carolina’s Republican Senator, Senator Richard Burr and seven other of his Republican colleagues, the “Department of Commerce and Workforce Consolidation Act,” which was proposed this summer:
The motivation behind this latest bill is to redirect the 23 percent of all federal contracts that should be going to small businesses into the hands of the nation’s largest corporations. Furthermore, if the SBA is merged with the Commerce Department, the door will be shut on the decade long scandal of diverting small business contracts to Fortune 500 firms through “false” and “improper” certifications and “vendor deception”.
Now, as a small business owner, you should be very concerned about a Republican takeover of the Presidency and the Congress? Why? Because the last time the controlled both Congress and the Presidency, government funds flowed like Canadian tar sands through existing pipelines to the largest corporations in America, and small businesses were shut out of most government assistance. That’s what I like to refer to to as Fortune 500 Socialism. These firms are laying off American workers (i.e., your customers) and outsourcing their jobs overseas. In the meantime, as more of your customers will slip into poverty, the government will provide less and less services and assistance for your businesses. Services such as these:
If you’re looking for a way to finance your growth, an SBA loan might be what you need. The SBA doesn’t actually make the loans. Instead, we guarantee a percentage of each loan made by lenders who partner with us. Our guarantee reduces the risk, which means these SBA lending partners are more likely to help small businesses that can’t get access to conventional loans.
… The federal government spends $500 billion a year in contracts. We work with all federal agencies to put at least 23 percent of that money in the hands of small businesses. We also work with small business directly, through training and business development programs, to help them compete for and win contracts. […]
[SBA] business experts offer counseling and training (nearly always free) to over 1 million small business owners each year. If you don’t have a counselor or mentor, you should. Our data shows that businesses that spend three hours or more with an SBA counselor have higher revenue and more employees as a result.
Of course, there’s a lot more to the SBA. From disaster assistance to surety bonds, we’re there with the tools you need.
You think Republicans want to help you when they get most of their bribes funding from the largest corporations in the world? If you do, you’ve been played my friends. The Republican party cares enough about your votes to keep lying to you about the evil socialistic plots of Democrats to destroy your livelihoods, but the truth is that Democrats have been far more reliable friends of small businesses than the Republicans. Just look at what happened the last tome the republicans were in complete control of our government. Mega-corporations made out like bandits, our deficit skyrocketed (deficits didn’t matter to Republicans back then, remember?), and no one paid any attention to Wall Street as it ran the global economy off the cliff and then, with the million dollar lobbyists convince Congress ans the Fed to bail them out with unknown and unaccounted for TRILLIONS of dollars.
Whereupon, those Too Big to Fail Banks stopped lending to you. That sure helped out your small business a bunch, didn’t it?
