Many
California employers are currently struggling through what has been
dubbed, "The Great Recession." As a small businessman, I know first
hand just how hard government has made it to hire new workers.
Businesses large and small are trying to avoid layoffs.
The latest
reports show very few are hiring, which is not a good sign in a time of
record unemployment. The economy, stock market, and consumer spending
are all on a roller coaster.
What businesses need from Sacramento is certainty. They need to know
that they’re not going to be saddled with new government mandates that
they can’t afford. And they need assurance that their taxes won’t keep
going up if they start hiring new employees. Small businesses are in
the Capitol every day pleading for relief from regulations. And they’re
fighting plans to impose new taxes and extend "temporary" tax hikes
passed last year.
For the sake of our economic recovery, elected Democrats should listen.
Small businesses represent more than half of the U.S. workforce. They
have proven time and again that they are the only force capable of
jumpstarting the economy and putting people back to work.
Unfortunately, legislative Democrats last year turned a deaf ear to
the concerns of employers. They may talk about supporting jobs, but
their votes tell a different story.
Republicans sided with small business owners 99 percent of the time,
according to the scorecard of the National Federation of Independent
Business. In contrast, Democrats had just a 12 percent pro-jobs voting record. And this year, things in the State Capitol are
shaping up to be even worse. Democrats are pushing for billions in
middle-class tax increases on income, oil, cars and jobs. Increasing
taxes in the midst of an economic downturn is the absolute worst thing
to do to bring back jobs.
It’s time for the party in control in the Legislature to start
listening to small businesses. We need to get government out of the
way of business growth, and to take job-killing tax increases off the
table once and for all. This will provide small businesses with the
certainty they need to start hiring again. And it will help to get
California on the road to recovery.