Alfredo Ortiz op-ed: Biden wage war on small businesses during National Small Business Week

President Biden claims to support small businesses during National Small Business Week this week, but his actions speak louder than words. Biden is waging war on small businesses and hitting them hard with new regulations, taxes and inflation.

At the same time Biden was giving his pro-small business remarks Monday morning, First Republic Bank crashed in one of the biggest bank crashes in American history because of Biden’s bad policies. As with the recent failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, First Republic collapsed under the weight of declining asset values ​​due to the Federal Reserve’s rapidly raising interest rates to combat Biden inflation.

The banking crisis is limiting access to credit for small businesses, preventing them from operating at capacity or expanding. Small banks, which provide 60 percent of loans to small businesses and 80 percent of loans to agriculture, are particularly vulnerable as depositors flee large banks in a perceived flight to safety. Biden and the Democrats don’t seem to care. They want more public control over a much smaller number of banks.

The lack of access to credit is just one front in Biden’s war on small businesses. Biden’s reckless spending has fueled historic and prolonged inflation that has eroded the already thin profit margins of small businesses. Inflation under Biden’s presidency exceeds 15 percent, meaning entrepreneurs who cannot raise their prices are one-sixth poorer under Biden.

Sensible legislation passed by the House of Representatives last week to rein in those inflationary costs and help small businesses has been rejected by Biden and his fellow Democrats.

Biden is also stepping up his regulatory assault on small businesses. He is pursuing labor regulations that would make it more difficult to become an independent contractor or franchisee. And he’s pushing environmental regulations that raise the cost of energy and transportation — two significant input costs for small businesses. For example, Biden’s EPA recently announced regulations requiring two-thirds of new cars to be electric in just nine years.

Finally, Biden is trying to pass massive tax increases on small businesses. In his latest budget, Biden proposes to raise the tax rate on small businesses structured as corporations by one-third. He promises to expand and expand the Obamacare investment allowance for small business income. And he wants to roll back the top marginal tax rate to 40 percent.

These tax increases would transfer money from high streets across the country, where it is needed, to Washington DC, where it would be spent on big government programs of little or no value.

Job creators network‘s American Small Business Prosperity Plan is fighting back in an effort to bring back Main Street. Each of the plan’s eight proposed policy provisions, developed in collaboration with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, enjoys over 70 percent support from America’s small business owners. Three of the plan’s provisions, which stop reckless spending, regulatory relief and work requirements for welfare, were passed in last week’s House legislation.

One of the most critical aspects of this plan that politicians should address next is making the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent. This 2017 legislation implemented several tax breaks for small businesses, including the ability to deduct 20 percent of their income. These tax breaks allow small businesses to operate on a level playing field with their large corporations and international competitors.

But without congressional action, these small business tax breaks have begun to expire and will expire entirely after 2025. Congress must act now so small businesses can make their financial and investment plans today.

Making small business tax cuts permanent could help small businesses threatened by bank collapses and the Biden administration’s war on small businesses. There is no better time for lawmakers to make such a commitment than during National Small Business Week.

Alfredo Ortiz is president and CEO of the Job Creators Network and author of The Real Race Revolutionaries: How Minority Entrepreneurship Can Overcome America’s Racial and Economic Divides. This article was originally published by RealClearPolicy and made available via RealClearWire.

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