Taking Mom And Pop To The Cleaners: How The Small Business Lobby Hurts Small Business

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Taking Mom And Pop To The Cleaners: How The Small Business Lobby Hurts Small Business

Ryan Grim
[email protected] | HuffPost Reporting

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/23/inside-the-small-business-lobby_n_812831.html



Throughout Wednesday's House floor debate over the repeal of President Barack Obama's signature health care overhaul, Republicans frequently claimed that the 2010 law will cost the U.S. economy 1.6 million jobs if it isn't rolled back. They were citing a statistic from an organization that -- on the surface -- is as unimpeachable a source in Washington as can be found: The National Federation of Independent Businesses, a lobbying heavyweight which dubs itself "The Voice of Small Business."

Yet for the past two years, the NFIB has been less an advocate for small businesses than an arm of the Republican Party. When the interests of the GOP and the needs of small firms have collided, the NFIB has repeatedly sided with Republicans, jeopardizing billions of dollars in credit, tax benefits and other federal subsidies that are critical to the small enterprises that form the backbone of the U.S. economy. Key legislative priorities for small businesses were delayed, diluted or abandoned -- including a major small-business bill -- while the NFIB spent its resources on legislative battles with only tangential connections to small firms, battling climate-change legislation, pushing to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy or opposing a stimulus offering tens of billions in giveaways for, yes, small business.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, NFIB's bigger brother of sorts, has received greater attention for its outright political warfare against Democrats. The NFIB has maintained a lower national profile, and is still routinely referred to in the media as "the small business lobby." But inside the Beltway, the NFIB's raw partisanship is increasingly isolating it from key policy circles, as lobby groups such as the National Small Business Association, the Main Street Alliance and others expand their influence among entrepreneurs and mom-and-pop enterprises.

By yoking itself to the GOP, the NFIB is employing a strategy routinely embraced by the Chamber on one side of the aisle and labor unions on the other. The strategy makes sense for labor and major corporations in that their competing interests neatly fit atop the platforms of their respective parties. It makes less sense for U.S. small businesses, whose interests are often served by either party.

[DCKit]

1. Just another front group like AARP, the CoC or any of Dick Army's "grass-roots" organizations?

I think so. After all, who's got all the money?

[wilt the stilt]

2. This is the classic example of how demented we are

We have outsourced and thrown away our manufacturing. Building things are good paying jobs. Germany out exports with 80 million people and we are relying on small business to generate good jobs instead of large corporations to expand and compete. good god.

[jwirr]

3. Like the farm programs - what they call small is actually big business

and they have nothing to offer real small businesses. This is true of so many government programs. For instance, federal housing programs are labeled for low income families. They really mean lower middle class. I have tried to get low income loans in the past and they always had some reason why I was too poor.

The people who write these laws are out of touch with what is really happening down here on the ground.