Will Ambitious Obama Plan Skip Small Businesses?
Nov 24th, 2008 | By Dawn R. Rivers | Category: Economy, Politics & PolicyPresident-elect Barack Obama told his radio audience during the Democrats’ weekly address this weekend that he and his economic team would act boldly to deal with an economy that was generating more bad news every week. He promised to inject new life into the economy by investing in infrastructure projects and building a new alternative energy industry, in order to create or save 2.5 million jobs over the first two years of his term in office.
He’ll be introducing his economics team during a news conference later today, too, but don’t expect to see his small business czar among the not-so-new faces. Unless Team Obama has been unusually tight-lipped, the president-elect has not yet named his SBA Administrator. It’s a curious oversight, since one of his campaign pledges was to re-elevate the SBA Administrator to Cabinet level and since small businesses are an excellent and low-cost source of new jobs. In many ways, you might look on this as Mr. Obama’s first big test on small business policy. Will he continue the practices of his predecessor and ignore small businesses in the larger scheme of things? It is time for the Obama team to indicate that they know the economy will not recover without small businesses, so that the rest of us know where we stand.
