My Loans Consolidated

Besides the disappointing news by Obama Economic Advisors chief, Christina D. Romer, that the stimulus program is not working, once again the government let down America, specifically the small business owners. The American Small Business League published their statement, expressing their disappointment in the Obama administration regarding help towards small businesses.

Just last week Obama announced his administration plan to give out new small business lending initiative which has been already mentioned by a series of speeches by Obama, but it still needs to yield results.

The American Small Business Leage had several facts to point out. But generally, what is mostly striking is that Obama seems to be killing small businesses which (in his Saturday radio address) he himself intoned as the “engine of our economy.” In last week’s speech, Obama also said, “This administration is going to stand behind small businesses. You are our highest priority because we are confident that when you are succeeding, America succeeds.”

Early this year the Obama administration promised that with every percentage of GDP growth, one million new jobs will be created. The GDP has increased but there is still no new job to get the economy back.

According to Wall Street Journal, the best way to get the economy going and the unemployment rate down is to help small businesses to grow so they can actually hire people. But what Obama is doing is exactly the opposite which was addressed in the statement of the American Small Businesses League.

Here are the few pointers that they highlighted:

1. Obama’s promises over the past year:

• To restore the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) budget,
• To restore the SBA Administrator to a cabinet levelposition,
• To implement the 5 percent set-aside goal for women owned firms,
• To stop the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants.

Result: The American Small Business Leage claims that none of these promises have been honored.

2. To stimulate the nation’s economy, the government spent roughly $2.8 trillion, $13 billion of which was received by small businesses. This is only 0.6 percent out of the $2.8 trillion in stimulus funds. This is very small to give to small businesses which Obama promised to give the highest priority.

On the Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington stated, “If this were really a high-priority for the administration, it could, you know, actually do something about it. Right now. The executive branch has plenty of weapons at its disposal
to force banks still dependent on billions of dollars in taxpayer funds and guarantees to change behavior.”

Last August, President Obama announced a government-wide plan led by SBA Administrator Karen Mills and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke to increase contracting opportunities for small businesses. The plan included over 200 events nationwide within 90 days; over 70 days after the announcement no schedule of these events has been released.

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