Candidates trade barbs about best way to help small to mid-size firms
As two competitive Congressional races began to heat up last week, the concerns of small businesses still struggling to increase orders and hire new workers took an unfamiliar place in the political landscape: center stage.
Though proposals aimed to help small to mid-size firms were mostly split along both party lines, Democratic and Republican candidates for U.S. Senate and the 3rd Congressional District seemed to concur that the current economic environment for these businesses was the worst in memory.
However, that was the only thing Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and GOP challenger Dino Rossi, as well as Democratic 3rd Congressional hopeful Denny Heck and Republican rival Jaime Herrera, agreed on.
Case in point: while Murray celebrated Senate passage last week of the Small Business Jobs and Credit Act, which clears the way for the creation of a $30 billion fund to help community banks increase lending, the Rossi campaign accused the three-term Democrat of supporting the expiration of Bush-era tax cuts for those making more than $200,000 – a federal tax bracket includes many small business owners.
"Sen. Murray's idea of fighting for small businesses is to ram through ill-conceived partisan bills, which kill jobs and strangle small businesses," said a Rossi spokeswoman on Sept. 16, the day the Small Business Jobs and Credit measure passed the Senate.
Perhaps sensing an opportunity to gain political traction in what is expected to be a tough year for Democrats, both Heck and Murray slammed their rivals for opposing the recently passed small business bill, which will likely be signed by President Barack Obama before the Nov. 2 general election.
"Jaime Herrera says we need to ‘let entrepreneurs grow their businesses,' but she opposes an important effort to help do just that – break the credit crunch and get small businesses the capital they need to expand, flourish and hire here locally," a Heck campaign spokesperson said last week.
Meanwhile, Herrera continued to criticize measures taken by the federal government, which she said failed to stimulate the economy or create jobs – particularly in Clark County, with unemployment pegged at 13.9 percent in August, according to the state Employment Security Dept.
"We don't need a complex scheme of government programs and loopholes for certain industries chosen by government agencies; we need government to let entrepreneurs and investors do what they do best and grow businesses," Herrera said in a statement. "Only then will new jobs be created in Southwest Washington."
