Is Obama Anti-Entrepreneurial?
There seems to be a growing drumbeat among some small business owners against President Obama and his stance, perceived or otherwise, regarding entrepreneurship.
Rarely a week goes by that, during our interviews with entrepreneurs on unrelated topics, Obama’s policies towards business creation come into question. He gets it from all sides, too: Liberals seem to fault his Small Business Administration for allegedly being pro-big-business, while conservatives fault his tax policy and stimulus packages as, as they put it, taxing the rich and providing a safety net for the unproductive.
Even those somewhere in the middle say he hasn’t provided enough
stimulus for small and medium-sized business owners; and they reserve
particular venom for the federal bailout of institutions such as AIG
and General Motors.
“We need small-business stimulus,” Chris Hurn, CEO of small business lender Mercantile Commercial Capital, told us recently, “more lending not more spending.”
While that point of view sums it up for many Main Street entrepreneurs, others more to the right of center feel that Obama has waged a “war on business,” as one recent opinion piece was partially titled. In it, columnist Carol Platt Liebau writes:
“The threat of greater regulation and potential antitrust litigation paralyzes companies and their management, chilling innovation and suppressing profits, right at a time when the struggling economy needs more creativity and forward thinking, not less.”
What do you think of the Obama administration’s performance when it comes to entrepreneurs?
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