This past Friday President Obama challenged business and industry to hire and train 100,000 unemployed veterans or their spouses before 2014. The President pointed out that there are one million unemployed veterans today with a 13.3% jobless rate for post 9/11 veterans.
To move the challenge along, the President has proposed the following tax credits:
Returning Heroes and Wounded Warrior Tax Credits: A new Returning Heroes Tax Credit for firms that hire unemployed veterans (maximum credit of $2,400 for every short-term unemployed hire and $4,800 for every long-term unemployed hire) and a Wounded Warriors Tax Credit that will increase the existing tax credit for firms that hire veterans with service-connected disabilities who have been unemployed long-term (maximum credit of $9,600 per veteran) and continue the existing credit for all other veterans with a service-connected disability (maximum credit of $4,800).
If this is the first you’re hearing about this, you must be from the small business world. Just look at who was standing with the President for the announcement—Humana, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Microsoft, AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, Walmart, Lockheed Martin and Honeywell.
The statistics are very clear. Small businesses create the most net new jobs. So where was anybody on the Presidential stage last Friday who truly represented small business?
Oh, the press release claims that the U.S. Chamber will use its network to spread the word to the rest of us. Even though there are many national small business organizations in this country that would be pleased to support the President in this effort, this administration (and to be fair every administration) just can’t seem to be bothered dealing with them directly when it comes to a high-profile media event. Instead it turns to the one business organization that on issue after issue demonstrates that it doesn’t represent America’s small businesses.
Trickle-down economics doesn’t work and neither does trickle-down appreciation for small business.