No matter where you are, you have to see the signs. The signs help you get past all the arguments about what is going to happen and show you what is real. In an election year, seeing the signs is even more important, as we face an important decision over whether the president deserves four more years, or whether someone else deserves the job.
Depending on what media outlet you go to, it’s easy to predict what they will say about the election. Turn on one channel, load one website, read one paper, and the President is the second coming of Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and George Washington, all rolled into one. Switch to another channel, site, or paper, and you will predictably hear the exact opposite.
I don’t think we reach good decisions when we approach them with such obvious filters on. We have to take an honest look at the signs to get at the truth, which will help us in our decision making.
The signs I have been looking at to evaluate the job President Obama has done since taking office, and what he is likely to do in a second term, have me a bit concerned as a small business entrepreneur.
A positive sign is that small businesses are recognized more and more for their importance to the economy. Just a few years ago, nobody was talking publicly about small businesses as the engine of job growth in this country. Talking “business” was synonymous with big business. That is no longer the case, and the president often talks about the importance of helping small businesses out to get the economy going.
However, what concerns me is that I haven’t seen actions to match the talk.
Early in his administration, President Obama recognized the importance of reducing the debt. He campaigned on cutting the deficit in half. He did a great thing: he appointed a bipartisan commission to come up with a plan to get the country’s fiscal house in order. But when the Bowles-Simpson Commission came out with its recommendations, they were completely ignored.
That concerns me.
The president’s plan for reforming the tax code does nothing for the vast majority of small businesses. His plan is to reduce the corporate tax rate, which is a fine proposal that is a part of every presidential candidate’s platform; however, stopping there means that reform has no impact on the millions of Americans working in sole proprietorships, LLCs, partnerships, or other pass-through organizations. We are taxed at the individual rates, and his plan is not to reduce those rates, but to raise them.
That concerns me.
President Obama seems more interested in making big rhetorical gestures, which look good on paper but accomplish little, than in growing the economy. His pet proposal, the Buffett Rule, would raise $47 billion over 10 years—or less than 0.5 percent of the projected deficits ($9.5 trillion) over the next 10 years. That hardly seems like the place to draw a line in the sand and prepare for political battle. An obsession with punishing the “1%” seems to be distracting the president from creating a better business environment for all entrepreneurs.
That concerns me.
As a small business entrepreneur, I believe it is common sense that you can’t spend more than you make. When you see that something is costing you more and more, sending your budget out of control, you need to do something about it, and fast. But as the always-sensible Thomas Friedman of the New York Times points out, President Obama’s proposals do “not credibly address the country’s long-term fiscal imbalances, which require cuts in Medicare and Social Security.” That’s why we’re projected to run $9.5 trillion in deficits over the next 10 years.
That concerns me.
Our country is at its greatest when we work together, debating rationally and without demonizing each other. In one of his most memorable speeches, Barack Obama, then just a candidate for Senator in Illinois, said at the 2004 Democratic National Convention that there are no Red States, and no Blue States; we are just the United States. That approach drew independents in droves in 2008, and gave President Obama sky-high approval ratings at the start of his administration. But I have not seen that attitude enough in his governance.
When I hear of the president dismissing Republican lawmakers by telling them, “The election’s over,” and “I won,” that concerns me.
Our health care system needs reform. But when the president expends every penny of his political capital pushing through a health care bill along strict party lines during the worst recession in my lifetime, that concerns me.
Our president is a critically important office, but we do not elect a dictator. We have three equal branches of government with checks and balances, all designed to make sure that there is a maximum of oversight and multiple opportunities to prevent bad decisions. So it was confusing to see President Obama, a constitutional scholar, tell the Supreme Court that it would be inappropriate to overturn a law passed by Congress; the Court has been doing that for more than 200 years.
That concerns me.
Whoever President Obama faces in the fall, presumably Mitt Romney, will have to undergo similar scrutiny about how his proposals will affect small businesses—and whether they incorporate the innovative thinking of entrepreneurs. But after three years, I can say with certainty that the incumbent has given me a lot of things to worry about.