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| Jack Faris is the president of NFIB (the National Federation of Independent Business), the nation’s largest small-business advocacy group. |
Anyone who’s ever driven over the river and through the woods to grandma’s house with kids in the back seat is painfully familiar with the plea, “Are we there yet?” But we take for granted that the road to granny’s these days usually includes a stretch of smooth interstate highway.
Today, millions of happy grandmothers live near some portion of the 46,000-mile network of thoroughfares that delivers those grandchildren almost directly to her doorstep. Interstate highways are only 1 percent of the nation’s roads, but they are vital to the economy, carrying one-fourth of all travelers and accounting for more than 40 percent of the miles trucks cover, according to the American Road and Transportation Builders Association.
When President Bush makes his State of the Union address to Congress next week, he is expected to ask lawmakers to support another vital segment of the nation’s economy that is also too often taken for granted: America’s 25 million small businesses that produce and deliver the goods and services that contribute more than half of the nation’s private, gross domestic product and are avenues to employment for half of all private-sector workers.
Unfortunately, some in Congress fail to keep their eyes on the road and miss the obvious signs indicating that small businesses are fast lanes to economic growth. Lack of attention by those legislators often forces entrepreneurs to take dangerous and costly detours that waste time, erode earnings and wreck job-creating enterprises.
Prognosticators think that the president will map out a direction to steer the government towards a destination he calls “wise tax policy,” which would allow small-business owners to keep more of the money they earn so they can re-invest it in their businesses. Such a policy would make permanent the tax cuts that the president earlier won, encourage investment in new equipment and buildings, clear the way for more job opportunities and haul the Death Tax off to the junkyard of recalled legislation.
It is also likely that the issue of affordable health insurance for small firms will be shifted into the passing lane by the president next week. Small-Business Health Plans can be sleek vehicles that allow small employers to bypass barriers erected by many states and join together to pool their risks, thereby gaining the lower-cost health insurance premiums that big businesses and labor unions now enjoy.
Lawsuit abuse is also a deadly pothole that threatens to become a gaping chasm that could swallow the lifelong labors of millions of small-business owners. The president has indicated he will ask Capitol Hill to slam the brakes on frivolous lawsuits and fine those who resort to such trickery in our courts.
Small-business owners learned long ago not to ask their government, “Are we there yet?” But if Congress gives the president’s State of the Union wish list some traction, you could soon hear the economy burning rubber.
Jack Faris is the president of NFIB (the National Federation of Independent Business), the nation’s largest small-business advocacy group. A non-profit, non-partisan organization founded in 1943, NFIB represents the consensus views of its 600,000 members in Washington, D.C., and all 50 state capitals. More information is available on-line at www.NFIB.org.
