Bush Economic Policy Hurts Small Business

I have discussed several times on this blog how most individuals in the poor, the working and the middle classes are being squeezed under the Bush economic policies. A combination of deflating housing equity and inflation of nearly everything else is slowly destroying everyone but the super-rich. If change does not occur soon, this country will slip from recession into depression.

Now we learn that the hard times are not just affecting individuals, but small businesses across the country are also being hurt, and it just keeps getting worse. In the first quarter of 2006, 5,811 small businesses declared bankruptcy. That's too many, but that number has climbed each quarter since that time. In the second quarter of 2008, small business bankruptcies had reached 15,471.

California is leading the nation in small business failures. They had 3,141 in the second quarter of 2008. But small businesses are going under across the country. Here in Texas, Republicans have been bragging about how good the "business climate" still is. That may be true for the large corporations, but Texas is second in the number of small business bankruptcies (1,168 in second quarter of 2008).

Republicans have always claimed to be the "business-friendly" party. They have spread this propaganda so thoroughly that it's hard to find a small-businessman that doesn't vote Republican. But these new figures are showing that belief to be a lie.

The truth is that Republicans are not "business-friendly", but instead are "corporate-owned". Republican leaders like George Bush, Dick Cheney, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Rick Perry, among many others, are convinced that whatever is good for the large corporations is good for all Amaricans.

They will tell you that most American jobs are created by small businesses (and that's true), but when they act it's always to protect the interests of the large corporations. And many times, what's good for large corporations is not good for small businesses.

Take for example the Republican energy policy (or lack of an energy policy). It has helped the oil companies, drillers, coal companies, gas companies, power companies and many other large corporations to make record-breaking windfall profits. Even the large corporations who are not directly helped by the policy, are large enough to negotiate rate-cuts so they are not really hurt by it.

But it is killing small businesses. Their electricity and natural gas costs them more. Their fleet and delivery costs are higher. Even their products cost more because of transportation costs. And their customers have less cash to spend because they also have higher gasoline and energy costs (not to mention higher costs for food, clothing and nearly everything else).

A lot of small businesses don't like Democrats because they believe in a decent minimum wage. But the truth is that they do better when individual citizens have more spendable cash. They also do better when the large corporations are reined in and forced to compete fairly.

It's time for small businessmen to realize that the Republicans are not their friends. The Republicans will toss them under a bus to help the large corporations in a heartbeat. It's Democrats who will help small businesses and their customers.

A change is needed and only the Democrats will provide it.