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Climate Progress

Small Business Groups Praise Obama’s Climate Stance, Call For Regulation Of Existing Power Plants

By Jeff Spross on Feb 15, 2013 at 1:57 pm

A coalition of groups representing over 150,000 American businesses and $9.5 trillion in collective assets signed a letter yesterday praising President Obama for his strong stance on climate policy in the State of the Union address.

In the letter, the business organizations Environmental Entrepreneurs, the American Sustainable Business Council, Ceres, and Green America Coming Together endorsed Obama’s new energy efficient and renewable power targets, as well as his commitment to “reduce carbon pollution, absent Congressional action, through existing federal authorities.” They also advocated for the executive branch to regulate carbon emissions from both new and existing power plants under the auspices of the Clean Air Act:

We understand the importance of certainty and clear market signals and believe national standards to reduce carbon pollution from new and existing power plants will clarify risks and opportunities for U.S. businesses, while also leading to technological innovation and investment in the domestic clean energy market… Ultimately, investing in cleaner technologies and more efficient resources can be a pathway to profit and prosperity, boosting economic growth and creating jobs while also providing competitive returns to investors.

We believe that the Clean Air Act currently presents the best option for reducing carbon pollution from power plants. We hope this Administration will quickly finalize the proposed Carbon Pollution Standard for New Power Plants and, as required by the Clean Air Act, move forward to propose a carbon reduction program for existing power plants.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority and the obligation under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon emissions should it determine they’re a danger to public health and the environment. The EPA reached that conclusion in 2009, and is already close to finalizing rules to regulate carbon pollution from new power plants. What’s lacking are rules for already existing power plants, but there are signs of movement in that direction.

In the State of the Union, Obama called for the United States to double the amount of renewable electricity it produces by 2020, and to double its energy efficiency by 2030. He also urged Congress to pass a market-style solution to climate change, such as the cap-and-trade bill put together by former Sen. Joe Lieberman (ID-CT) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) several years ago.

Obama did not explicitly call for extending the EPA’s reach to existing power plants in the speech, but he did bluntly state, “If Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will.”

I will direct my Cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.

The letter from the business groups comes on the heels of another letter from the Small Business Majority expressing similar support: “Our polling found 87 percent of small business owners believe improving innovation and energy efficiency are highly effective ways to increase prosperity for small businesses.”

NEWS FLASH

57 Percent Of Small Business Owners Say Tax Increases On Wealthy Would Do Less Harm Than Spending Cuts | 57 percent of small business owners say raising taxes on the wealthy would do less harm to the economy than spending cuts to job training, infrastructure investment, and education, according to a poll from the liberal group Small Business Majority. Automatic spending cuts and tax increases are set to take effect at the end of the year, but despite Republican arguments that letting the high-income Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year would hurt small businesses, small business owners are more concerned about budget cuts. An earlier poll from the same group found that a majority wanted Congress to focus on a plan to create jobs rather than on deficit reduction.

Economy

Small Businesses Grew Twice As Fast Under Clinton Tax Rates

By Travis Waldron on Nov 9, 2012 at 5:15 pm

Republicans have long opposed the expiration of the high-income Bush tax cuts, those that hit incomes over $250,000, because they claim it will be a tax hike on America’s small businesses. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said as much today in highlighting his opposition to the expiration. “Raising taxes on small businesses will kill jobs in America,” Boehner said. “It is as simple as that.”

Economic evidence, however, contradicts that view. Under President Clinton, the top marginal tax rate was 39.6 percent, where it would return if the high-income Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year. But small businesses grew twice as fast during Clinton’s time in office than they did when President Bush occupied the White House, as this chart from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows:

Boehner has repeatedly highlighted a flawed study stating that the expiration of those tax cuts would kill 700,000 jobs and hit a substantial number of small businesses, even as non-partisan reports from the Congressional Budget Office and Congressional Research Service show that the expiration would have little effect on economic growth, and the Joint Committee on Taxation found that only 3 percent of small businesses would be hit by the increase.

And, as CBPP notes, there are numerous problems with Boehner’s argument. A “small business” would have to earn substantially more than $250,000 a year to actually feel an impact of the higher tax rates, meaning it likely isn’t that small anyway. Many of them, meanwhile, are “pass through entities,” businesses that operate as investment vehicles or for other reasons and are “not engaged in business activity as it is traditionally understood.” According to a Treasury Dept. study cited by CBPP, just 7.6 percent of the income taxed at the top two income tax rates comes from actual small business income.

Economy

‘Small Business’ Lobby Starts Astroturfing Bus Tour To Protest Out Of Context Obama Remark

By Travis Waldron on Oct 25, 2012 at 12:40 pm

NFIB tour stop in Indianapolis, IN

INDIANAPOLIS — The National Federation of Independent Businesses — an organization that presents itself as “The Voice of Small Business,” but actually favors corporate interests in its lobbying efforts — kicked off a nationwide bus tour this week to protest President Obama’s “You didn’t build that” comments.

The “I Built My Business Tour” began Monday in Wisconsin and has included stops in Illinois and Indiana. It will continue through Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia before ending in Florida two days before the election.

At a tour stop in Indianapolis Wednesday, NFIB members and Indiana state lawmakers talked about the importance of small businesses to the economy, with several mentioning that they were “appalled” or “shocked” by Obama’s well-worn “You didn’t build that” comments, made at a campaign event in July. Obama’s comments have been used by the Republican National Committee and other organizations, even though the full context, in which Obama cites the role of government in helping foster business growth, is rarely provided.

The NFIB has played an extensive role in opposing Obama’s policies: it led one lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act, the health care law it says is causing more “uncertainty,” and it opposes his plan to raise taxes on incomes over $250,000 (even though, as Mother Jones noted, only 3 percent of small business owners fit that bill).

NFIBExposed.org, a project of the Center for Media and Democracy, found that 98 percent of the NFIB’s campaign contributions in the 2012 cycle have gone to support Republican candidates, while 100 percent of its advertising budget has been spent either supporting Republicans or opposing Democrats.

Election

GOP Congressman Relied On Millions In Government Contracts To Build His Company

By Aviva Shen on Oct 23, 2012 at 5:32 pm

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) has enthusiastically embraced the Romney campaign myth that Obama attributes businesses’ success to government, exemplified by the RNC slogan “We Built It.” When it comes to his own construction business, however, it seems that King did not in fact build it. Salon reports that the construction company King prides himself on building “up from one bulldozer” was in fact sustained by more than $1.66 million in government contracts between 1994 and 2011:

But, as King now acknowledges, government contracts were a key part of his business going back some time. In 1987, he sued a client who had not paid him. An affidavit King filed includes a letter the future congressman sent to a customer in 1985 requesting payment. Explaining his urgency, King wrote at the time, “as you are aware, we are in a very depressed farm economy and my only other market for my works is contract work from various government agencies.”

Documents show that King’s company worked regularly for various local governments throughout the 1990s and 2000s. In 1994, he demolished a firehouse for the City of Odebolt for $15,500. In 1998, he took about $82,000 from the same city for a memorial walk. In 2002, the company made $64,000 from Crawford County to stabilize a building, followed a few months later by a $141,000 contract with the City of Battle Creek for wastewater treatment improvements.

The next year, King was elected to Congress and his son took over the company, taking in at least 10 other municipal contracts through 2011 worth up to $200,000 each for everything from road construction to water treatment improvements. Altogether, from the firehouse demolition in 1994 to through a grading job for a local utility last year, King Construction made at least $1,665,000 in government contracts.

When asked about his company and its substantial government assistance, King told Salon, “I built it. I built it on low-bid — both private and public — contracts. I created jobs and saved the taxpayers money on every road I built.”

King is just the latest Republican whose anti-government rhetoric is tripped up by a personal experience of how important government assistance can be to business owners. Even vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) family business relied on government contracts, while almost every small business featured by the Romney campaign has had some financial help from the government.

Health

Obamacare Is Not Causing Small Businesses To Drop Their Employees’ Coverage

By Tara Culp-Ressler on Oct 23, 2012 at 2:30 pm

Several studies have already debunked the conservative assumption that President Obama’s health care reform law will negatively impact the economy by discouraging small business owners from hiring. In fact, there is no evidence to suggest that Obamacare will require small businesses to provide expensive health care plans that they can’t afford.

And a new study assuages similar fears that small business owners might drop coverage for their employees before Obamacare takes effect in order to avoid being hit with crippling expenses. The Midwest Business Group on Health surveyed businesses across 16 states, ranging in size from small companies with fewer than 1,000 employees to larger corporations that employ more than 5,000, and found “little indication that employers plan to drop health care coverage.”

As Forbes reports, while employers understand that they may want to adjust the scope of their health benefits plans, they are not anticipating the need to drop coverage for their employees because of the health reform law’s implementation:

“Employers still believe that health benefits are vital to attract talented employees and maintain a productive workforce,” said Scott Thompson, president of the healthcare practice of The Benfield Group, a market research and strategy firm that collaborated with the Midwest Business Group on the study. “This research found that most employers, especially those with more than 200 employees, will not drop employee benefit coverage in the foreseeable future.” [...]

“After 2013, the majority of employers responded that they will be adjusting to the ‘new normal,’ making changes to their benefit design strategy in response to the post-ACA environment,” said Larry Boress, president and chief executive of Midwest Business Group, which represents more than 100 companies that purchase more than $3 billion in health care services annually. “The majority plan to continue to offer benefits.”

In fact, some studies project that the health care reform law may actually lower costs for small business owners, thanks to the tax credits that Obamacare provides employers to help them purchase insurance. And that isn’t Obamacare’s only positive impact on the economy. Nearly 29 million Americans will receive significant tax cuts under the health reform law, and it will also help create nearly 4 million jobs over the next decade.

Health

STUDY: Health Care Reform Helps Small Businesses

By Tara Culp-Ressler on Sep 11, 2012 at 4:55 pm

Opponents of President Obama’s health care reform law often justify their position by claiming Obamacare will hurt small businesses. But research on the subject in Massachusetts — where the health care reform that Mitt Romney enacted during his time as governor provides a test case for national health reform policy, thanks to its similarities to Obamacare — disproves this conservative talking point.

Economic researchers on a recent Georgetown University panel all agreed that Massachusetts’ small business owners were actually bolstered by health care reform, as the number of small businesses offering health care to their employees increased from 70 percent to 77 percent in the time since Romney enacted the reform in 2006. Linda Blumberg, an economist and senior fellow at the Urban Institute, said her organization’s research confirmed that small business owners are not struggling to afford the insurance plans that the health reform law requires them to provide for their employees:

“Our research demonstrated very clearly that there is no evidence that the reforms have had any negative impact on employment at all,” Blumberg said. Her organization studied specifically some industries that might feel a greater impact under the law—small employers or the retail and restaurant industries, which often don’t offer health insurance—and concluded the same. “In none of these sectors did we see reduced employment,” Blumberg said.

In fact, said Jack Connors Jr., a founding partner at Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos, Inc., a Boston marketing firm, one of the largest in the United States, businesses could see a benefit when health insurance is “accepted as part of the compensation package for employees.”

“Many business leaders would say we have a competitive advantage,” Connors said.

Just like Obamacare, Romney’s health reform in Massachusetts is predicated on an individual mandate that requires employers to provide adequate health insurance coverage to their employees or risk paying a penalty. Although Republican lawmakers have decried Obamacare for strangling small business owners and middle-class workers, and have wasted about 89 hours and $51 million dollars in their attempts to repeal the law, the evidence from Romney’s home state suggests their efforts are doing little to protect small business interests.

Blumberg explained that her research on the economic effects of health care reform has left her confused about why Obamacare remains so politically contentious. “This was very much a compromise between liberal sensibilities and business sensibilities,” she explained. “So the entire perception of the federal law has been shocking to me, because this was really laid out as a moderate approach.”

Election

RNC’s Featured Small Business Owner: My Company Needs More Government Contracts

By Aviva Shen on Aug 28, 2012 at 10:08 pm

The first night of the Republican National Convention was heavy with “we built that” references and small business owners who feel overtaxed by the government. But one featured small business owner, Phil Archuletta of P&M Signs, went off-message when he took the stage to rail against the government…for not giving him enough contracts:

ARCHULETTA: For the last 40 years, my company has built the road signs on the Forest Service road system. In fact, in 1984, I was fortunate to receive the national award from President Reagan for being the most successful minority business in the United States. In 2004, President Bush made it possible for our company to manufacture signs for all federal agencies. When President Obama came on board and pushed the stimulus, I believed my business was going to explode with work. Unfortunately, it never happened. … Today, we are barely hanging on with the orders from the state of New Mexico – thanks to Governor Susana Martinez – and the few orders still coming through the Forest Service from our very loyal customers.

Watch it:

In expressing his frustration, Archuletta is exposing the fundamental lie of the Romney campaign’s “we built that” theme. Government small business loans and contracts have sustained almost every small business Romney has featured in his campaign. Archuletta’s business, like the others, has been sustained by the comparatively reliable supply of government work. Far from disparaging hardworking small business owners as Romney wants voters to believe, President Obama’s original comments celebrated the “American system” that helps bolster individual drive like Archuletta’s, concluding, “When we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.”

Economy

Conservative Economists Claim Taxing The Rich Hurts Small Businesses; Small Businesses Disagree

By Guest Blogger on Aug 3, 2012 at 12:20 pm

Our guest blogger is Heather Boushey, Senior Economist at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Yesterday, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) gleefully unveiled a list of 88 economists, who warn “that raising taxes on small businesses would have a detrimental impact on the economy.” Their argument is that raising the marginal tax rate on income earned above $250,000 per year, as proposed by Democrats in Congress and the Obama administration, will lead small business owners to constrain hiring or lay-off workers.

Yet, these 88 economists are saying something that small businesses owners themselves do not. In a NPR radio piece from December, journalist Tamara Keith tried to find small business owners to go on the radio to talk about how a surtax on millionaires — that is, a tax increase on the wealthiest — would constrain small business hiring, the same argument made in the economists’ letter. As Keith noted in the segment:

NPR requested help from numerous Republican congressional offices, including House and Senate leadership. They were unable to produce a single millionaire job creator for us to interview.

So we went to the business groups that have been lobbying against the surtax. Again, three days after putting in a request, none of them was able to find someone for us to talk to. A group called the Tax Relief Coalition said the problem was finding someone willing to talk about their personal taxes on national radio.

NPR then posted their request to Facebook and got a few responses. But, these voices said what small business owners have been saying throughout the recession and recovery, which is, to quote Ian Yankwitt, who owns Tortoise Investment Management, “It’s not in the top 20 things that we think about when we’re making a business hire.”

Granted, this specific radio segment was about the millionaire’s surtax. But, for years, small business owners have been telling leaders in Washington that the number one problem is sales. Only in recent months has that number come down. The reason small businesses aren’t hiring has not been taxes; according to them, it’s been the lack of demand, too few customers with cold hard cash in their pockets.

As ThinkProgress has noted over and over, allowing the Bush tax cuts on income in excess of $250,000 to expire would not hurt small businesses. Conservatives simply use small businesses as a sympathetic character as they argue in favor of continuing their failed supple-side policies.

In general, I think it’s fantastic when individuals in the economics profession use their expertise to weigh in on the most pressing issues of the day. However, I think that it is important to look at who is weighing in. Compare the letter Boehner circulated to the one , urging Congress to maintain — and even increase — investments in human capital and infrastructure, which will improve economic growth now and in the decades to come. Unlike Boehner’s, well over 300 economists, including Nobel Laureates and John Bates Clark award winners, signed that letter.

Election

In New Billboard, Romney Campaign Showcases Small Business That Directly Benefited From Obamacare

By Adam Peck on Aug 1, 2012 at 9:47 am

A photo of the billboard at night alongside an Orlando highway. Credit: The Tampa Bay Times

The Romney campaign is up with a new billboard touting another small business owner upset with President Obama’s out-of-context remark that businesses don’t succeed on their own but rather with help from federal government programs.

But like so many of the small businesses that the Romney campaign has trotted out in recent weeks, Tanya L. Burns & Associates, an insurance brokerage firm in Florida, is yet another beneficiary of federal spending. And not just any spending: Burns’ firm has helped clients reduce their health insurance premiums thanks to the Affordable Care Act, which Mitt Romney has pledged to repeal.

In a 2011 article in the Orlando Business Journal, Burns appears dumbfounded — and pleasantly surprised — at the lower premiums some of her clients received when they renewed their insurance contracts:

Tanya Burns, a local insurance broker and the owner of Tanya L. Burns & Associates Inc., said when she got the renewal for First Baptist Church and another Osceola County church, both with a 1.5 percent decrease from Aetna, she thought something was wrong with her eyes. Then, in November, she had another company renew at a 5 percent decrease. “I called the girls in the office and told them we’re not going to call Aetna and ask any questions, but we’re going to frame this and put it up in our lobby.”

Since the passage of Obamacare in March 2010, millions of individual and business policy holders are now eligible to receive rebate checks from their insurance providers thanks to provisions that require 85 percent of premiums collected go towards medical claims. If that threshold is not reached, customers receive automatic rebates. Florida in particular had an exceptionally high number of customers scheduled to receive a cumulative $149 million in rebate checks this year.

On their website, Tanya L. Burns & Associates has an entire “Health Reform Resource Center” set up, offering information on the key benefits of Obamacare and a Frequently Asked Questions page.

During the Romney campaign’s recent “Built By Us” initiative, more than a dozen of the small businesses that the campaign sought to highlight have been found to contract with government agencies or receive taxpayer-funded small business grants and loans.

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