Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Small businesses ask, now what?

What are the main issues small-business owners are talking about regarding President Obama’s reelection?

While taxes, health care reform and the so-called “fiscal cliff” are hot topics, what owners really want are assurances “that more people are going to walk through the door,” said Mekael Teshome, an economist with PNC Bank who follows small businesses.

“The concerns are how strong is this recovery going to be, and is this recovery going to be strong enough to keep business flowing in?...It really has to do with feeling good that the economy is moving forward.”

Obama could face a tight-timeline to prove this: “It needs to be in 2013, this coming year,” Teshome says. That’s because the last two years for two-term presidents can be especially difficult as Congress changes hands. That happened with GOP President George Bush in 2006, when Democrats took control of the House.

Other takes on these topics making the rounds Wednesday: The lobby group National Small Business Association is urging lawmakers to "get to work" addressing the "fiscal cliff," the package of tax increases and deep spending cuts that will take effect in January unless Congress reaches a budget deal.

On The Daily Dose blog at entrepreneur.com, Diana Ransom writes that Obama’s second-term plan for small businesses includes extending some of his strategies from the first four years. Among them: awarding government contracts to small businesses, and expanding upon the 18 small-business tax credits already enacted.

Small-business owners still have questions about the cost of health care reform and providing health insurance for employees, writes Joyce M. Rosenberg of the Associated Press.

How do you expect a second Obama administration will affect your small business? Email me at cesmith@charlotteobserver.com

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Obama's reelection is a total disaster for the economy and thus small business. He clearly has no plan about how he is going to grow the economy; without adding jobs, the economy will not grow. What's worse is that Obamacare is going to cause many businesses to either layoff employees or change current full-time employees to part-time; this means less money for them to spend = economic slowdown or worse, a possible recession.

Obama still has a hard-on for the evil wealthy people (many of them business owners) and he now has nothing to lose by not backing down to the House. He could well put us back into a recession by allowing Bush tax cuts to expire and sending us over the 'fiscal cliff'.

We also will get sit back and watch Obama allow the UN to start levying taxes on US that will be redistributed to poor (corrupt) countries to make sure that we 'pay our fair share'.

Obama's reelection is a total disaster; I did not think that many Americans are that stupid, but they are. I guess they enjoy a crappy economy, not having jobs, high food and gas costs and absolutely no plan whatsoever to get things back on track. Say what you want about Romney, but at least he had a plan.

Good luck America!