By Lloyd Chapman
President, American Small Business League
I can already hear the empty pandering to the middle class in President Obama's State of the Union speech. He will be reading one of the most well written speeches of his presidency since he and his handlers realize their reign in Washington could be on the ropes.
President Obama has a documentable track record of broken campaign promises and policies that have virtually ignored the middle class.
In my perfect world, every network carrying President Obama's State of the Union address would be required to run a scrolling banner of my up to the minute commentary on the bottom of the screen.
When President Obama starts to roll out his impassioned B.S. about his concern for small businesses and the middle class, I could throw-up some of the actual data on his policies to date.
As people watch President Obama on the screen, I want them to see that small businesses in the middle class are responsible for over 97 percent of all net new jobs in America. To date, President Obama and the democratically controlled Congress have allocated approximately 2 percent of the stimulus funds to small businesses.
When he starts to talk about small businesses, I would run some of the latest government data that shows every day of his administration, hundreds of millions in federal contracts that by law are earmarked for small business have been diverted to Fortune 500 firms.
I would love to run the names across the bottom of the screen as he spoke of some of the firms the Obama Administration is currently giving small business contracts. I wonder how President Obama's most ardent supporters would feel when they saw billions of dollars in federal small business contracts going to Bechtel, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman.
The largest recipient in the latest government small business data was Textron, a Fortune 500 corporation with 43,000 employees, and $14 billion in annual revenue. That's a small business right? Textron received nearly $780 million in federal small business contracts in a single year.
I wonder what affect it would have on his poll numbers if every American knew the Obama Administration was giving U.S. government small business funds to some of the largest corporations in England, France, Italy and even South Korea.
After all the shocking statistics ran, I would run a statement President Obama released almost two years ago in February of 2008, "It is time to end the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants." (http://www.barackobama.com/2008/02/26/the_american_small_business_le.php)
I think most people would be much more informed if they skipped President Obama's State of the Union address and spent that time looking up some of the stories on what he has actually done instead. Google "Lloyd Chapman Barack Obama small business" [Do not search with the words in quotes] and see what you find.
There is a staggering abyss between what Obama says and what Obama does.
One of the best examples is President Obama's campaign promise to enact a windfall profits tax on the oil and gas industry. On every campaign stop for two years, President Obama promised to enact a windfall profits tax on oil companies. If you want to find out how much you can trust what Barack Obama says, try and find his excuse for completely dropping the windfall profits tax.
So when you watch the State of the Union address or any Obama speech, realize that the man gives $2 billion a week in federal small business funds to some of the largest companies in the world. Realize that his two top campaign contributors, Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan Chase are making record profits in the middle of the worst economic meltdown in 80 years, while bankruptcies for small businesses are up 44 percent over last year.
People need to begin to realize that President Obama should have received an Oscar for best actor instead of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Wednesday night he will read his lines with passion and conviction, but Thursday morning his policies will continue to ignore the middle class and the small businesses where most Americans work and that create over 97 percent of all net new jobs.
The only change the middle class going to get from President Obama will be the pocket change that's left in their bank accounts at the end of the month.
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Contact:
Christopher Gunn
Communications Director
American Small Business League
cgunn@asbl.com
(707) 789-9575
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