Did President Barack Obama and Speaker of the House Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi wait too long to help their Constituents?

It takes nearly a year for the President - whom most of you and I voted for -- to "actively" address issues loudly yelled, screamed, and hollered by constituents at the beginning of the Obama Administration on January 20th, 2009 and during the 2008 Presidential campaign trail. Today, January 30th 2010, three days after President Obama's first "State of the Union Address", the President introduces his tax incentive hiring proposal for the financial benefit of Small Businesses to hire a "few" people.

The climate on this January day in 2010 is still one of uncertainty in the job market with over ten percent unemployment nationally and businesses skeptical of hiring anyone, while  large banks (Government-bailed-out large banks) are reluctant to lend to smaller banks and businesses. Individuals are unable to secure loans from small banks nor get jobs in the trickle down loan and credit crunch imposed by bailed-out big banks with their toxic assets accumulating and credit issues.

In the electronic, print, and internet media, Republicans are now having a field day on the under-estimated job lost issue (Republican can get away with the criticizisms now, though most of us know that siding with Big Business and stomping labor unions is what Republican have been known for for decades).

Today though, Independents are now siding in vast numbers with Republicans winning pertinent political offices recently adding a US Senator in Massachuetts, and two new Republican Governors in both New Jersey and Virginia due to the Independents vote.

With a "little guy" (Middle Class) platform -- that the President campaigned -- for over a year now, that same "little guy" continues to be ignored while Wall Street is awarded near a trillion dollars from the Government. The President 'failed to recognize' that these demands -- and his campaign promises -- were expected immediately and not a year or two or three years later after appeasing Wall Street, Big Business, and Big Military, which -- if you think about it -- is the basis for the Republican Party platform.

The previous Bush administration did not allow the "little guys" proposals to be heard on the floor of Congress, nor by design in the board rooms of Wall Street Corporations -- where they divided Bush's excessive top 1 percent executive tax cuts quarterly.

Now that all of the backlash from "the little guys", the President proposes a cursory tax incentive plan for Small Businesses to hire a few workers in the year 2010:
1. http://kirktanter.blogspot.com/2010/01/presidents-busingess-incentives.html
2. http://kirktanter.blogspot.com/2010/01/president-obama-announces-new-proposal.html

This is just a small start Mr. President -- I say small "START" due to the third bullet point on the above link #1, that states a "cap of 500-thousand dollars" incentive on the 33-Billion dollar (bullet point #5) stick and carrot. Just 33-billion for hiring American workers, but near a trillion dollars for Wall Street, a trillion for the military, and hundreds of billions to the failed Auto Industry. Yes folks, just 33 messily billion dollars for the Presidents' constituents. We hope a "fair", "balanced", and "comparable" trillion dollars will be awarded for business hiring incentives emerge for 2011.

As you can see people, a much greater cap is needed from Mr. President in the millions per business (trillion overall) for the effect to make a difference...before the 2012 re-election Presidential campaign.

Next time Mr. President please, we beg of you, to listen to the people that voted you into the Presidency. The many disenchanted and never served voters -- normally non-voters -- cast their ballot for you. Their hopes and opinions count worthy of a trillion dollars that you seperately served up to the Big Banks, Big Insurance, Big Auto, and Big Military. The mesily 33-billion dollar stick and carrot provided to Small Businesses is not enough.

We the people would not even mind if you added Big Corporations to the hiring tax incentives list, as they hire in greater numbers. Hiring is Hiring. In fact -- due to de-regulation practices of Reagon, Bush, Clinton, and Bush2 administrations, the Big Corporations have bought up most of their Small Business competitors with the legal elimination of fair business practices.

Mr. President, getting Americans back to work is the goal by any means.

Below is that voting voice of mine addressing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi a month and a few days after President Obama's historic Inauguration I attended with pride. At that time in early 2009, I wondered why did one of their near trillion dollar Recovery Bill leave out small businesses and also "removed" incentives for education.

Below is the question I asked Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (and Speaker Pelosi's answer) at the Maria Leavy Memorial Breakfast honoring Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi at the US Capitol on March 3rd, 2009.  http://www.marialeaveymemorial.com/node/22

photo of Kirk Tanter and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi at the Maria Leavey Memorial breakfast 3/3/2009

KIRK TANTER, SYNDICATION ONE: I’m getting tons of e-mails from small business associations who feel that they’ve been somehow left out of the recovery bill; in the form of taxes, as well as investment into small business. That’s one question. The other, is, in so far as education being taken out of the recovery bill, were you satisfied, not taken out totally but cut down, were you satisfied or dissatisfied that education was cut down out of the recovery package?


SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE NANCY PELOSI: Well, I’ll start with education. What happened on education was, school construction for us was a very important element of the recovery package. For reasons that I said before about education bringing more money to the treasury than any other initiative. School construction created jobs immediately, and contributed to a better learning environment for our children to get the other result. This was largely by the way rehabilitation money. It was money that could go in really fast and rehab schools and new construction, so this was fast money out there to do this. We had it as a line item. The Senate resisted that because they didn’t want to establish a line item for school construction. So, how we compromised was to take that same money and put it in the aid to the states, the state stabilization fund, with direction that the money would be used, could be used for school construction, and certain amounts of it would be almost automatically going to the district. Some of it more discretionary. But that was fine. I preferred our way of doing it, but we had a good outcome. We had a very positive outcome. And we are talking about a great deal of money. Kids are very smart. You, uh, uh, are close to being kids. You know you can’t go to kids and say education is very important, it’s about you reaching your own self-fulfillment, it’s about the role you play in your community about the strength of our nation, education is very important, and send them to a dump to go to school. They get a a mixed message. If it’s so important, why are they not making it important, you just want me to make it important, and while there’s some magnificent schools in our country, probably most are, a lot of the children that we are trying to reach don’t have access to those kinds of facilities, and that should never, never, be the case. And that’s why in the bill, instead of having a lot of the discretion go to governors, we had a lot of the education money flow directly to districts. That was one of the insistences of the House, were they just said, we cannot just let it be, that it goes there, it sits there, they make decisions. We want the money to go, and so a lot of the formula related to Title 1, where the children and economically disadvantaged areas, and uh, IDEA children with disabilities, which has been seriously underfunded. In terms of the small businesses, they’re affected by everything in the package, by the fact that, you know, tax cut is in the bill for 95 per cent of the American people, of the great middle class and those who aspire to it. You know, they are affected by many of the things we do on unemployment insurance and food-stamps and all the rest to get people purchasing power. We do have what the, House Banking, excuse me, House Small Business Committee wanted us to do in the bill. Clearly, it is not enough because you are getting these e-mails and we want to do more. Some of the things, that, that will take a little more time to explain and to pass and the rest, that, really don’t have to do with money so much as they do with policy. But there are debates going on. Do you subsidize the seven day loans, the loans, that go to small business. Do you, what else do you do? One of the things the small business wants us to do is, not tiny small business, but small business by, by some definition, is to lift, a Sarbanes Oxley from them. That is one of the biggest requests we get from small business, is that. That, why should they have to, we know who caused the problem. There should be that kind of oversight and, and, and, supervision. But why should small businesses be paying that price. Depends on how you define a small business, I mean we are talking about the corner grocery store, which we think benefits from injecting money into the local economy, to increase demand and therefore create jobs. But we are talking about the next layer up. We are looking at other tax treatment for investments in entrepreneurial ventures that could, could, free things up. And one of the things, that, that as, far as like the stock market is concerned, I know you don’t ask about that; I was just watching this morning, all the accounts of a historic nature, of going under seven thousand, is, one of the biggest messages I think we can send from the Congress, with our values in order and our priorities very clear, is the additional peace of fiscal soundness. I think that, that is very, very, very important for that to emanate from here, so that it isn’t characterized from the other side saying, their just spending, their just spending, their just spending, it doesn’t have a course of action. It does. It has a vision, it has an integrity to it, but it also has fiscal soundness tied to it and I think we have to get that message out more, more, clearly. Again, back to your small business. We reviewed many options in, in, that we could consider. We took what, where, we had consensus and some of that some of that springing from our house small business. So if they’ve suggested some things, I’d be, eager to, to, hear what they. We planted two poles when I became leader; one was veterans and one was small business. These were two areas where they were being under-served by the Federal Government, and, we made a big difference for veterans. We, had the veterans in here yesterday, the American Legions and the rest. They were so thrilled because of what we had done. We promised, we did what we promised, and now the President is even going to, going beyond that. For small business, we have them here all the time, and manifestation, whether it’s small business, small businesses run by women, minorities, whatever, entrepreneurs. So, so, just so you know, what we did. We eliminated all fees on SBA bank loans and established a new program that will make SBA interest loans to firms who are struggling with payment on existing debt. Based on five, from five, to ten per cent, well why don’t I, why don’t I just give you this because it’s a longer list. {Gives Fact Sheet Handout} But it’s, it’s a whole, American investment Act recovery and job creation by American businesses large and small. But that’s, that’s a very important priority for us, the small business.