The Obama administration has been a total failure when it comes to small and minority business. How did I come to this conclusion? There are two easy ways to determine what is important to a person or an elected official: to listen to what they talk about the most and to open their checkbooks to see who they write checks to.
Everyone knows that the small business community is the economic engine of our country–we create over 70% of all new jobs, not the Fortune 500 companies. But yet, Obama rarely engages with the small business community and has never met with a group of Black businessmen since he has been in the White House.
You rarely hear the President talking about the minority business community. Oops, I forgot, that would entail talking about Black businesses also and this president will do nothing to remotely make people think he is Black.
He will meet privately with homosexual or Hispanic business owners before he meets with Black business owners. Obama has no minority businessmen in his inner circle.
This is where Romney blew it during his recent speech before the NAACP. Going to a Black group and not mentioning Black entrepreneurs is like going to church and not mentioning God! Business is supposed to be Romney’s strong suit, but Obama and the Democrats are “swift boating†him when it comes to his business background.
How do you take someone’s greatest accomplishment–being a very successful businessman in Romney’s case–and turn it into a liability? This is the same thing Bush did to John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election–turned Kerry’s military service into a liability.
Minority business has always done better during Republican presidencies than under Democratic ones. But under this current administration, Black and Hispanic contracting with the federal government have decreased 8 and 7%, respectively.
So, what should the Obama administration do to address the issues affecting small and minority business?
They should do the same thing they did with Hillary Clinton and homosexual rights. Clinton tied our foreign aid policy, specifically in Africa, to the acceptance of homosexual rights.
Never in the history of our country have we made such a demand on a sovereign state.
In foreign policy, we call this “conditionality.â€Â We will give assistance, but you will have to agree to all the conditions we put on you. There is nothing unusual about this. In fact this can be a very useful tool in foreign policy.
Yet this same administration puts no conditions on the billions of dollars the big banks received from the U.S. government. Banks took the money at almost zero % interest and then refused to make loans to businesses–both large and small; minority and non-minority.
Obviously, in this administration’s view, it is more important to promote homosexuality in foreign countries through conditionality; than to promote and force banks in the U.S. to give access to capital to small and minority business owners.
How many jobs has the homosexual agenda created? I can guarantee that if all small business owners were homosexual, this administration would focus on them like a laser beam.
The economy by far is the most important issue facing this country and yet the very group that can be the most helpful–the small and minority business community–is the one community that this president is ignoring the most.
If conditionality is a valid tool in Obama’s foreign policy, should it not be a tool in his domestic policy? The interesting thing is that there are laws already on the books requiring defense contractors to partner with small and minority businesses. None of the firms ever meet their numbers because they know the government will not do anything about it; so small businesses continue to suffer.
So, the lack of talking and the lack of action by this president on small business issues proves that the economy is not paramount to this administration! When all is said and done, there is more said than done.
Raynard Jackson is president & CEO of Raynard Jackson & Associates, LLC., a D.C.-public relations/government affairs firm. His website is:Â www.raynardjackson.com. The views expressed in this article of those of Jackson, and do not necessarily represent Black Enterprise.