Confidential Counselor

President Obama still hates small biz

President Obama as well as his economic team and senior advisors have taken to the airwaves to tout what they are going to do to supposedly help small businesses. The vehicle that they have chosen to do this is to provide TARP money to community banks for small business lending.

On the surface, this sounds like a grand plan. Unfortunately, in reality, based on what we know so far, this appears to be nothing more that campaign style rhetoric. Here are some reasons.

• Will regulators and underwriters suddenly ease off on their overly stringent restrictions that they started applying 18-24 months ago?
• Many small businesses owners have killed their own personal credit rating in order to keep their business afloat and employees working during this recession. How will that be viewed by community banks?
• This program, as stated now, is especially geared toward urban and rural areas. So if I own a small business in say Princeton, NJ, employ 10 people, and I need assistance, I will not qualify because Princeton is not in an urban or rural area?
• One of the many failings of the ARC program was that financial institutions that did participate, and very few did, only wanted to work with current customers. Will this new program be different?

As an aside from all of this, why hasn’t the President called for swift passage of H.R. 2568? This would have a huge and positive impact on small business and would stop the diversion of millions of dollars to large corporations who currently receive small business set-aside Federal contracts.

President Obama once again recently said: “You got a better idea? Bring it on.” Well Mr. President, I, and many other small business owners do have better ideas and we in the trenches have done many things (letters, email, telephone calls, etc.) attempting to reach you to share them, yet, you have ignored us. Why?

It is time for President Obama to show some real leadership towards small business and to do the things necessary for them to save current jobs, create new jobs, and to grow their businesses versus regurgitating the same old worn out applause lines.