Along those same lines, the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council in a statement advised entrepreneurs to keep a close eye on whether the president uses the power of his office to push through pending crowdfunding legislation that would give new businesses yet another means of securing capital.
Most small business owners also said they would like to hear the president loosen his stance against the Keystone XL oil pipeline, however, Frank Knapp, vice chairman of the American Sustainable Business Council, applauded that position and said he hopes the president remains firm in opposing the project. “Those mythical tens of thousands of jobs people are talking about just aren’t there,” he said in an interview, noting that government estimates place the number of jobs closer to a few thousand, most of which will be temporary. “It would be nice if he would clear up all the misinformation surrounding the project and explain that it really won’t lead us to energy security.”
Knapp also commended the president for elevating Small Business Administrator Karen Mills to the cabinet but said he was concerned about the the president’s recent proposal to combine six federal agencies, including the SBA.
Robert Litan, vice president for research and policy at the Kauffman Foundation, said the president was running out of options for “magic policies left for entrepreneurs” but said he hoped Obama would call on Congress to make permanent a capital gains break for investors who pour money into small businesses. The measure, part of the Small Business Jobs Act the president signed into law in September 2010, helped encouraging early-stage investments in small firms but expired earlier this month.
Still, those individual legislative initiatives are relatively trivial compared to what Litan calls the big picture: the country’s growing need for a finalized budget.
Obama “has to note that we are long overdue for a budget deal and that he’s willing to do whatever he can between now and the election to get a deal done,” Litan said. “He has to at least wave the flag and show that he is serious. If there is nothing about the budget in there, it will be a glaring omission.”
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