Small Business Lobbies—Working for You? (Part 2)
(continued from page 1) The NFIB did recently score a victory for small businesses with a provision under HR 4297, the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005 Conference Report. This provision, signed into law in May, was part of a bill to make the 2001 tax cuts permanent and extended a 2003 measure allowing businesses to expense capital investments. It also increased limits, up to $400,000 per year. The break is extended to 2009.
The National Small Business Association (NSBA) is the oldest small-business lobbying group. Established in 1937, it has 150,000 members and, like the NFIB, has been a staunch supporter of estate-tax repeal. On the other hand, NSBA has opposed the Enzi bill, because of the pre-emption of state laws. The organization opposed an earlier NFIB-supported Association Health Plan bill that would have permitted outfits like NFIB to self- insure—to get into the healthcare insurance business directly. The NSBA applauded the recent Massachusetts healthcare legislation which, like its own reform proposal, relies on getting maximum participation among employers and employees to obtain lower rates.
The US Chambers of Commerce (Chambers) make up the largest all-around business advocacy group in the world, with 3 million members. What are they doing for small business? Although they lean to the right, this association has been vocal in its opposition to certain Bush Administration moves, such as cutting funds for 7(a) loans through the Small Business Administration (SBA), and has rallied against the Administration’s drive to cut the program entirely. Like NFIB, the Chambers support Small-Business Health Plans and wants to abolish the estate tax.
A new organization that would seem the polar opposite of NFIB and the US Chambers is Small Business Majority (SBM), formerly Small Business for America, established in 2004. SBM rejects Association Health Plans and Small-Business Health Plans as piecemeal, temporary solutions that only complicate the patchwork system of small-business healthcare insurance now in place. SBM advocates comprehensive national healthcare reform, endorsing the Massachusetts system of ensuring that almost all of its citizens have access to affordable healthcare coverage as a model to emulate countrywide. Massachusetts recently mandated that all residents must have healthcare insurance by July 1, 2007. The legislature passed a provision that requires business owners with more than 10 employees to either provide healthcare insurance or kick in a “Fair Share” of up to $295 per employee per year.
“The main reason we like the Massachusetts plan is that it is comprehensive—it asks everybody to come to the table,” says John Arensmeyer, founder and CEO of Small Business Majority. “It requires everyone to participate, and doesn’t place the burden on any individual, or on any business, or on government alone.”
SBM promotes the Small Employers Health Benefits Program Act of 2005, a Democratic bill that it says would preserve state insurance regulations and reduce administrative paperwork by using a system based on one now used by federal employees. The association also supports healthcare tax equality for businesses, regardless of size, which would allow small business owners to afford healthcare insurance in part through the use of tax credits.
As for the estate tax, “We’re not in favor of eliminating it entirely,” Arensmeyer says, due to budget deficit concerns. The organization does support increased exemptions and wants to preserve the “stepped up basis” rules in effect until 2010. Those rules allow exemptions of all capital gains on assets up to the time of death.
Alone among small business lobbying groups, the efforts of the American Small Business League (ASBL) are aimed solely at the practices of the SBA. This organization represents “the 98% of U.S. companies with less than 100 employees” according to its Web site. The ASBL acts as a scourge to keep the SBA in line with its own policies.
On the table now is the incendiary issue of whether franchises can be considered small businesses for purposes of competing for government contracts. Under a Republican proposal to the renewal of the Small Business Reauthorization Act, franchises of large corporations could be considered small businesses under SBA guidelines. The ASBL sees this provision as a blatant end-run around current guidelines that do not allow large businesses to set up franchises and then compete through them for prime contractor business. Also called into question by watchdog ASBL and others are the interests and experience of President Bush’s SBA nominee Steven Preston, a former vice president of ServiceMaster, a corporate heavyweight with 5,500 franchises nationwide, including those of TruGreen Chem Lawn, Merry Maids and Terminix.
