Obama's Small Business Sham
President Obama's recent plan for small business job creation is on shaky ground. Obama is relying on the Small Business Administration (SBA) to assist with loans and small business contracting, but reports show that the SBA has organization and leadership problems. The Partnership for Public Service's 2010 survey of Best Places to Work In The Federal Government shows SBA ranked fourth from the bottom.
SBA ranked near the bottom in areas of leadership, teamwork, training and mission match. Yet, SBA ranked near the top in the area of employee compensation. Management experts could tell Obama that relying too heavily on an organization already failing in leadership, teamwork and mission is a recipe for disaster. No wonder morale is low.
SBA employees likely recognize the dichotomy between the president's words and his actions regarding small businesses. SBA employees probably hear complaints, daily, from the small business community about the anti-business policies that have been advanced by the Obama Administration over the past 19 months.
SBA employees have likely witnessed the devastation in the small business community from the threat of confiscatory tax policies because the Administration refuses to understand that many of the "rich" identified by Obama for increased taxation are really small businesses that follow the law and report their business income on their personal tax forms.
Recently, healthcare insurance providers have announced that the new rate hikes due to Obamacare may result in businesses facing a 9% increase in the cost of healthcare premiums. For many small businesses, 9% oftentimes represents the business' entire profit that year, so the Obamacare mandate could wipe out the fruits of an entire year's effort, or even worse, put a small business in the red.
SBA employees probably see more clearly than anyone that small businesses are being crushed. In yet another Administration failure, small businesses have been frozen out of the $787 Billion dollar stimulus spending, where contracting is completely controlled by the government.
The rush to burden the American taxpayer with another stimulus our country can't afford shows Obama's misplaced belief that the government can spend its way out of an economic downturn and shows a colossal lack of understanding about what it takes to run a business.
Perhaps even more telling for the probable failure of Obama's small business initiative, during the past nineteen months, the SBA failed in meeting its small business lending goals.
Consider: even in areas that the SBA has direct influence over--such as enforcing the procurement laws and requiring federal agencies to meet the statutory requirements for small business contracting--the SBA has failed miserably with only one out of over a hundred federal agencies achieving its small business contracting goals.
Obama tries to claim that his policies: "will make America stronger and more competitive." But, each day, Americans can see how little Obama understands about competitiveness. Crippling taxes, wealth redistribution, trillions of dollars of debt are disincentives that crush small businesses and make the U.S. less competitive.
Americans see small businesses frequently being used as a prop by the Obama Administration. When the Administration needs to show diversity, it trots out a small business. When the President needed to break bad news, such as the rising unemployment numbers--he staged a press conference at the offices of a small business owner. To show he's in touch with the younger generation and distract attention from policies which will, in essence, enslave them and their children -- Obama showed up at a start-up bootstrapping facility.
Small businesses create 3 out of every 4 jobs and deserve to be more than just convenient props for the Obama Administration's failed policies.
The President has never been an entrepreneur, business leader or manager, has never had to create a competitive niche, and thus has no experience in creating a high performance organization.
Poorly-performing, low-morale organizations have difficulty performing at the high levels that are now needed to help small businesses create jobs. Memo to Obama: simply announcing a policy doesn't make it happen.
Before American voters put their trust in any more of Obama's promises, the President needs to convince Americans that he's capable of successfully running existing government programs.
The SBA received a failing grade in its core mission--create more small business contracts--and received a vote of no-confidence from its employees about the strategic direction advanced by the Obama Administration. If the past is any kind of a prologue, Americans can expect that Obama's promise to execute, successfully, his small business plan is just another sham.