Barack Obama’s weekend message to America’s entrepreneurs: “'If you've got a business - you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.” Actually, he may not be lying. Hussein Obama may actually believe that small businesses couldn’t exist without government’s control and guidance.
The truth, as every small businessman knows, is that government is a significant and annoying obstacle a small business owner must overcome. Consider how government makes it harder for us:
As Nicholas Owen noted recently in the Wall Street Journal:
“As of 2008, small businesses faced an annual regulatory cost of $10,585 per employee, according to an SBA regulatory impact study published two years ago. “
A recent survey by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce revealed that 80% of small businesses say that the taxation, regulation and legislation from Washington makes it harder for their business to hire more people.
In a 2010 USA Today column, Chip Mellor and Dana Berliner pointed out the obstacles government erects:
“Cities and states stifle new small businesses at every turn, burying them in mounds of paperwork; lengthy, expensive and arbitrary permitting processes; pointless educational requirements for occupations; or even just outright bans.”
Kmele Foster, entrepreneur and president of America’s Future Foundation, recentlty provided some important insights about government and small business:
“Right now, there are roughly 170,000 federal business regulations currently on the books. Written in fine print, single-spaced and double-columned, they fill about 150,000 pages of text. In 2008 alone, regulations cost the U.S. economy $1.75 trillion, according to a report from the Small Business Administration. That's equal to a whopping 14 percent of the nation's gross domestic product. Add that to the nation's tax burden, and it's easy to see how the federal government is stifling businesses, undermining employment growth and handicapping America's global competitiveness.”
Obama has it backwards. We did build our businesses. Government was not a partner but rather an obstacle in our road to success.
Actually the "that" that the president was referring to in the line you excerpted referred to the previous sentence. The full quote would be "Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business. you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen." One would have to have heard the speech to understand. The presidents speech patterns (like anyone's) don't always translate well to text.
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