Small businesses crave credit flow now

Each day my staff and I have been calling small businesses throughout my district. We call mostly to see how they are doing and if there is anything I can do to help them.  Perhaps not surprisingly, though, almost as a single voice, they say the same thing: “The president has got to get these banks lending again.”

Without credit, small businesses cannot order goods in bulk, they cannot extend credit to their customers, eventually they cannot make payroll, and ultimately, they can’t keep the doors open at all.

{mosads}The president focused on many things in his State of the Union, but one thing he didn’t focus on was why, a year and a half after the biggest bank bailout in history, his administration still cannot figure out how to get homeowners and small businesses the credit they need. He has railed against bonuses and told Wall Street that he is ready for a fight. But angry talk only plays on the frustration that so many Americans and I feel about the situation; it will do nothing to help business. 

I have always said that this president would be in trouble when he started believing his own press releases. Sadly, that is what is happening now. My colleagues and I tried to explain that the TARP had no accountability. We tried to explain that passing a stimulus loaded with pork would do too little and do it too late.  

We pleaded everyday small businesses were going to be the key to recovery and to focus on them. Finally, we called in vain for certainty with regard to tax policy.

In short, the Democrats still think they know better. 

They talked endlessly about how they were creating a “green economy” and “jobs for the future.”

 They said that the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of grants would spur innovation and job growth.  

They shrugged us off when we questioned the wisdom of directing less than 1 percent of the stimulus to the Small Business Administration. 

When we advocated for immediate tax cuts instead of supporting more blind spending, we were spurned and labeled the “party of no.”

One year on, barely a quarter of the money has made it into the economy.  And if you listen closely, not to the noise and rhetoric of the State of the Union, or the editorial boards and the pundits on television, you’ll hear what the small businesses in Brooksville, Fla., are saying: “President Obama, you have got to get the banks lending again.”

In short, this is the state of the union: Out of 265,000 manufacturing companies in the United States, nearly 260,000 are small businesses.  And as Congress and the president mill about, checking polling data and trying to revive healthcare, state unemployment taxes paid by those small businesses are skyrocketing. In my home state of Florida, the minimum annual rate charged to small businesses in 2010 has increased twelvefold. That is a 1,200 percent tax increase. It might also be worth noting that when they go under, the self-employed owners of those small businesses won’t get to collect the same unemployment benefits that they paid into. 

It is not all that complicated.  I spoke to two local businesses last week that make recycled diesel fuel from restaurant grease. They rely heavily on two “extender” tax credits currently sitting on a shelf in the Senate.  

Since the credit expired Jan. 1, one of these businesses has stopped refining altogether and the other has had to lay off two dozen people. Those aren’t just “green jobs,” Mr. President, they’re real ones.  Before we lose any more valuable jobs, let’s “create or save” them, by passing the tax cuts that are pending action.

Brown-Waite  is a member of the House Ways and Means Committee.