Few issues have divided Americans as completely as health care reform. Proponents believe that making medical care available to 32 million uninsured people will open a new era of social responsibility and fulfill the government’s covenant with its citizens, a sort of 21st Century New Deal.

Opponents see it as an unprecedented loss of personal freedom and an apocalypse of government interference that amounts to full-frontal socialism, if not totalitarianism, that is, a 21st Century New Deal.

The language of the heath care reform bill, passed by Congress on March 21 and signed by President Obama on March 23, may be bureaucratic and its provisions may be labyrinthine, but the basic idea is simple: Almost every citizen and legal resident of the United States (excluding American Indians) must purchase medical coverage for themselves and their dependents or risk what will eventually be hefty tax penalties, beginning in 2014. This insurance may be provided through employer programs or purchased through new “marketplace” sources.

Certainly so-called universal health care will be expensive, to the tune of $940 billion in the first 10 years. Who pays for it?

The wealthy can expect to pay more for Medicare, and insurance companies will pay an excise tax on employer-sponsored health plans that cost more than $10,200 a year for an individual or $27,500 for a family; this comes after 2018. Drug companies, health insurers and medical device manufacturers will also face new fees and taxes, as, in a fine point, will owners of indoor tanning services.

“Obviously, the legislation presents lots of challenges,” said Tim Finnell, a partner at Name Search
Watch Service', TITLE, 'Learn More', WIDTH, 200, SHADOW, true, STICKY, 1, CLOSEBTN, true, CLICKCLOSE, true, BGCOLOR, '#e1e1e1', BORDERCOLOR, '#7d0200', TITLEBGCOLOR, '#7d0200')">Group Benefits LLC in Memphis. “Insurance premiums are going up, and they’re not going down. The good thing is that the law subsidizes low-income people by subsidizing tax credits. That begins in 2014.”

And then there are small businesses, defined by the government as a company that employs fewer than 100 people. According to the American Small Business League, 98 percent of the businesses in the U.S. employ fewer than 100 people, and 89 percent of those employ fewer than 20. Many restaurants fall into that category.

The Washington-based National Restaurant Association firmly opposed passage of the health care reform bill.

“We are extremely concerned that the health care bill will impose tremendous burdens on Americans’ restaurants,” said the group’s president and CEO, Name Search
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“It will hurt our industry’s ability to create and sustain jobs.”

The restaurant (or food service) industry employs 12.7 million Americans in 945,000 food outlets, according to the National Restaurant Association.

Restaurant sales in 2010, estimates Restaurant Industry Forecast, will represent about 4 percent of the U.S. gross domestic profit, and food service employees will account for 9 percent of the nation’s work force. The National Restaurant Association counts 380,000 restaurant members.

Name Search
Watch Service', TITLE, 'Learn More', WIDTH, 200, SHADOW, true, STICKY, 1, CLOSEBTN, true, CLICKCLOSE, true, BGCOLOR, '#e1e1e1', BORDERCOLOR, '#7d0200', TITLEBGCOLOR, '#7d0200')">Mike Miller, owner of Patrick’s Steaks and Spirits and president of the Memphis Restaurant Association, echoed Sweeney’s assessment.

“Everybody wants to do something for their employees,” he said, “but I can tell you that the way the bill was passed has restaurant owners shaking in their shoes. They’re terrified. I have under 50 employees, but if you have 90 or 100 employees, it’s going to cost $100,000 for coverage. Are you supposed to take a cut in pay? I’ve been talking to my accountants, and I think this will be devastating. The unintended consequence is that the law is a great incentive not to expand.”

What is everyone so terrified about?

Basically, small-business owners can look forward to these provisions (and thanks to businesspundit.com and csmonitor.com for the non-lawyerly explanations summarized here).

In 2010, businesses will receive a 35 percent tax credit if they have 10 or fewer employees earning less than $25,000 on average. The tax credit will be smaller if they employ 25 or fewer people with an average wage of $50,000 or less.

Starting in 2014, businesses could earn a 50 percent tax credit if they employ 10 or fewer people earning less than $25,000 on average.

If a business employs 50 or more people, it will be fined $750 per full-time employee if health insurance is not provided, though there won’t be a charge for the first 30 employees not covered, and there will be no penalty if fewer than 50 people are employed.

If health insurance is provided for employees, the business must cover no less than 72.5 percent of the cheapest health plan for individuals or 65 percent for families. Every employee must be enrolled, unless they choose not to be covered.

“I think there’s some general hysteria out there now,” said Finnell. “In terms of affecting businesses, we’re telling our clients that there’s not really a short-term effect. The provisions will probably add 2 to 4 percent to the cost of doing business, but not one will be forced to pay anything if they have 50 or fewer folks, but above that, yes, you will be paying more.”

Source:  http://www.memphisdailynews.com/editorial/Article.aspx?id=49374

With the November Congressional elections on their minds, Senate Democrats are working on a bill that would reportedly help small businesses get more access to loans, government contracts and overseas markets.

The bill would potentially use money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program for loans made through community banks, The Washington Post reported yesterday. Also under consideration are provisions that would raise the limits on SBA-guaranteed loans from $2 million to $5 million, increase access to government contracts and research grants, and provide more support to export programs.

The timing is potentially spot-on for small businesses. We're finally seeing some signs that the economy is recovering, like increased retail sales figures for March. Given more funding and bigger markets, downturn-weary entrepreneurs might finally be able to move from survival mode to high gear.

But it's not all that easy for the government to make loans and sales opportunities available. If legislators are serious about offering real help, they will makes sure they anticipate any potential roadblocks before they pass the bill. That means paying careful attention to the details in a way that seems to be out of style in Washington right now.

Consider what happened when the Recovery Act authorized loan application fee waivers and higher government guarantees for SBA-backed loans. This program turned out to be very popular, given banks' reluctance to lend to small business during the credit crunch. The dollar amount of SBA-guaranteed loans doubled in the most recent quarter, compared to the same one last year, The Wall Street Journal reported. However, the program has come to a halt three times until Congress authorized additional funding. That left applicants grappling with whether to move ahead on their applications and pay the steep fees - which for one business amounted to $43,000 - or to put themselves on a waiting list with the hope that more funding for the program would be forthcoming.

While the federal government says it awarded a record number of government contracts to small business owners last year, small business advocates counter that many such contracts have, historically, actually gone to big corporations in entrepreneurial clothing. The American Small Business League is suing the General Services Administration to get access to data that would help in investigating whether big companies deliberately misrepresented themselves as small in the past decade so they could go after contracts intended for small firms, according to a Washington Post report on Monday.

This doesn't mean that government is incapable of offering real help to the small business community. It simply underlines how important it is for legislators to get this bill right, so it works as planned.

As a nation that is depending on hiring by small business to pave the way out of the recession, we can't afford any new measures to help them that don't work well and chip away their confidence. Usually known for perennial optimism, they are pretty pessimistic right now, especially about Washington. They need to see that legislators who know how to get things done right are on their side.

A survey of small business owners released Monday found that 49% see the federal government as moderately to highly unsupportive toward small business. Only 5% see it as very supportive, according to the findings by e-mail marketing company Constant Contact and collaborators such as the American Chamber of Commerce Executives, the Association of Small Business Development Centers, and SCORE.

It's going to take some smart policymaking to get small business owners feeling positive again. The National Federation of Independent Business's Index of Small Business Optimism which was released yesterday, fell in March, despite recent economic growth. "Poor sales and uncertainty continue to overwhelm any other good news about the economy," said Bill Dunkelberg, NFIB's chief economist.

If this new bill provides some real help, it could turn around the mood of the nation's entrepreneurs. Once they feel ready to start growing their businesses again, that will give other Americans something to feel optimistic about: more jobs.

Source:  http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/04/will-the-new-small-business-bill-do-the-trick-maybe/38957/

The American Small Business League has taken the U.S. Army to court over what ASBL says is the military’s refusal to release information regarding the compliance of its prime contractors with small business subcontracting goals.

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit was filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

The ASBL maintains that the Pentagon's refusal to release the information is a “clear indication” that it has something to hide.

"The Obama Administration is withholding these subcontracting reports because it knows that these reports will show the federal government and prime contractors are falsifying their small business contracting numbers," says ASBL President Lloyd Chapman.

The ASBL originally requested the most recent quarterly subcontracting reports for contracts awarded by the Army to ManTech Telecommunications and Information Systems Corp. (NASDAQ: MANT) of Fairfax, Va. Prime contractors are required to produce subcontracting reports for each contract awarded by the federal government, ASBL says.

The small business group maintains that the Pentagon's refusal to release information regarding prime contractor compliance with small business subcontracting goals is a further indication that the Pentagon is falsifying compliance with its small business contracting goals.

Soruce:  http://www.centralvalleybusinesstimes.com/stories/001/?ID=14920

Perhaps you’re familiar with the various signs of the apocalypse.  You know: plagues of locusts, lakes of fire and Oprah getting jiggy with John Tesh. Horrific as those images may be, small-business owners seem more frightened by the current economic picture. Two new surveys - one from Discover, the other from the National Federation of Independent Business - show that, whatever rousing talk from Ben Bernanke about “moderate recovery” (strike up the band!), small-business people think conditions are hovering around 4th-and-20. The Discover research says 53 percent of owners believe the economy will get worse in the next six months and the study by NFIB is more negative: it notes that even in the depths of the 1982 recession, 47 percent of small-business people figured conditions would improve, whereas now the number who say the same is minus 8. (Which goes to show that, whatever you say about Yanni’s “Chameleon Days” tour - Tesh on keys! - the ’80s were a damn good era.

Will work for free. In other downbeat news, jobsites like Monster.com and CareerBuilder are reporting a significant increase in the number of adults willing to do unpaid internships. And companies are happy to take them up on it. A for-profit firm accepting volunteers is illegal, of course. So if you’re currently unemployed and you want to work in a blogger’s world, shoot us your CV. (We haven’t turned a profit in years.)

SBA: what’s the big idea? So asks frequent correspondent Lloyd Chapman, president of the American Small Business League, who last week filed suit against the SBA for refusing to release information related to its close ties with large corporations. Regular followers of this blog (pipe down back there!) are familiar with the story. For years the SBA has been ladling out federal contracts earmarked for small firms to companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and British Aerospace. Now, embarrassed by the attention stirred by Chapman, the GAO and others, the SBA is cranking up the smoke machine. It recently paid $30,000 for a sit-down with APCO Worldwide, a multinational PR firm that specializes in crisis management. (Your tax dollars at work.)

Source: http://www.allbusiness.com/company-activities-management/company-structures-ownership/14279626-1.html