Uncertainty Killing Small Business – says Lincoln

Blanche Lincoln, the Senator from Arkansas, one of the hand pick questioners at the Senates Q&A session with President Obama. The Senator exposed the problem with grown in the country’s economy, uncertainty for small business owners. With everything from healthcare, taxes, war, and global warming, small business does not have a stable environment for growth.

Senate Democrats had a chance to ask the President questions at a Q&A session this week. Mostly a show for the home town crowds in their respective states, the Senators asked tuff questions to help boost poll numbers at home. All of the Senators that asked questions will find themselves in a fight this fall for their seats. If you didn’t know that it was democrats asking the questions, you would think that the questions came strait from the GOP. One of the best and most important questions came from Senator Blanche Lincoln.

“I visited with a constituent yesterday, good Democrat, small business owner, who was extremely frustrated — extremely frustrated because there was a lack of certainty and predictability from his government for him to be able to run his businesses.”

Lincoln did not elaborate on what lack of certainty the small business owner was referrin

The point speaks for itself. If small business in Amecrica feels that the future is not ripe for growth, the business owners will save as much capital as they can by cutting cost. Lowering expenses, laying workers of, or cutting benefits and wages would be just some of the possibilities not to mention not hiring new employees. We can only speculate as to the reaction of owners in an uncertain economic situation that continues in this country.

Lincoln went on to say, “He’s — he and his father have worked hard, they’ve built three or four different small businesses, and he fears that there’s no one in your administration that understands what it means to go to work on Monday and have to make a payroll on Friday.  He wants results.  He wants predictability.”

Although predictability is key for a small business, none has been created by this administration. Not knowing how to run a business and what it is like to make payroll, is typical with most politicians.

When the question was finally asked it went like this:

“what can we tell the people in terms of predictability and certainty in getting this economy back on track?  How are we going to do that?”

This was the first question of three from Lincoln before the President would give his answer.

Obama: “Well, if the agenda — if the price of certainty is essentially for us to adopt the exact same proposals that were in place for eight years leading up to the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression — we don’t tinker with health care, let the insurance companies do what they want, we don’t put in place any insurance reforms, we don’t mess with the banks, let them keep on doing what they’re doing now because we don’t want to stir up Wall Street — the result is going to be the same.”

So the President answered the question by blaming the Republicans and giving himself permission to change everything all at the same time. The problem is not that we need change it is that we need to make those changes in a well thought out plan that will not destroy the confidence in owners of small business.

Small business will take the country out of a jobless recovery

Only if they feel some stability and certainty in the federal government. The President and the 30 billion community bank funding plan for small business will only work if business that qualify for financing apply for a loan. Otherwise the economy will stay in the swampy mud of no jobs and no real growth.

Tagged as: American's Recover Capital, Blanche Lincoln, lending small business, obama, obama sba loans, Obama's State of the Union speech, Senator from Arkansas