If Washington can get out of the scandal business, here’s what it might get around to thinking about.
One of Congress’s biggest guns for business, Jim Talent (R-Missouri), chairman of the House committee on small business, has declared 1998 a good year and says the agenda for 1999 is even better.
Last year, he notes, Congress reauthorized funding for the U.S. Small Business Administration’s loan guarantee programs and passed some laws to reduce the paperwork burden on small business. Perhaps most significant was the acceleration of plans to allow 100 percent health insurance deductibility for the self-employed—an important measure as businesses move increasingly to outsourced and independent white collar labor.
Here are the House committee’s goals for ’99:
- Fight for a tax bill that addresses such small business interests as capital gains, death tax relief and clarification of independent contractor status. All have been addressed in some fashion over the last few years, but not to the extent the business lobby desires.
- Continue to fight for regulatory relief and make government agencies accountable for regulations burdening small businesses. Also looking at ways to improve the system.
- Help small businesses become Y2K compliant. A survey by the National Federation of Independent Business concluded that only 41 percent of small businesses had taken action or planned to take action on potential Y2K problems.
- With more than 42 million Americans without health care—and more than 75 percent of them working for small employers—the committee plans to increase access to affordable health care through association health plans that allow businesses to pool their purchasing.
- The committee will tend to low income communities. The American Community Renewal Act of 1996 (sponsored by Talent), authorized enterprise zones and creation of public/private partnerships to cut capital gains taxes and reduce red tape in blighted areas. Talent now hopes to increase the role of small business in these communities.
- Continue making the SBA more efficient and useful to small businesses.