I will confess to you that dredging up stories to report has proved to be something of a challenge.

That’s because Congress doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything these days, except those huge, earth-shattering Obama Administration priority items like health care and energy policy. So far, both the Small Business Committees have been fairly quiet since returning from recess.

We’ll see how long they keep that up.

If you decided to head over to flu.gov to check out the small business preparedness guide that the SBA was touting last week, you may notice that many of the suggestions and directions there are clearly inapplicable to microbusiness.

Basically, if you are a microbusiness and you decide to take the relatively uncharacteristic step of writing up your own flu season preparedness plan, you may have to get creative in places where the guidance offered is not precisely helpful.

The eight, soon-to-be ten, states with utility companies that offer on-bill financing for energy efficiency upgrades, by the way, are Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Kansas, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island, with programs under development in Illinois and Michigan.

For more information:

• House Committee on Small Business
• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Flu.gov web site
• National Small Business Association
• Government Accountability Office (GAO)