Obama’s Health Care Plan Hurts Small Businesses

As a former small business owner, I understand the pressures faced every day by small businesses across the 19th District. Small businesses represent more than 99 percent of all businesses in the nation, and make up half of the U.S. economy. Since the current recession began almost two years ago more than 7 million jobs have been lost, many of these from small businesses.  The Department of Labor reports that 263,000 jobs were lost in September alone.

In these difficult economic times, we need to help small businesses grow jobs instead of enacting massive taxes that will inflict further harm upon small businesses and eliminate millions of additional American jobs. Instead of scrapping these job-killing bills and starting over, the Democrats’ plan for government run health care would impose more than $820 billion in new taxes on the American people, including new payroll and income taxes on small businesses.

These taxes have to be paid by someone. And if Speaker Pelosi gets her way, she will enact a $544 billion surtax on the so-called “rich” to help pay for their government takeover of health care. According to data from the IRS, more than half of those targeted under this new health care surtax are small businesses, many of which are already facing challenges.

Why are Democrats pushing a government takeover of health care that will inflict harm on small businesses and make job losses even worse? These are not the types of policies that will help small business get back on their feet and create new jobs. Many small businesses simply cannot afford to pay for their employees’ health care, and others struggle to cover rising health insurance premiums. To me it sounds like small businesses, which are the very backbone of our economy, are getting the short end of the stick in this health care debate.