Small Business Owners on Bush Tax Cuts, Fiscal Cliff: “It's Time to Listen to Main St., Not Wall St.

The following article is from the Main Street Alliance. The Main Street Alliance is a national network of state and locally based small business groups that creates opportunities for small business owners to speak for themselves on issues that impact their businesses and local economies.

As Congress reconvened Tuesday for its lame duck session, small business leaders from the Main Street Alliance network sent a letter to President Obama, House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and other congressional leaders outlining a small business agenda for the fiscal showdown coming in the lame duck session of the 112th Congress. Main Street business owners called for an end to the top-bracket Bush tax cuts, urged Congress to protect middle class programs that strengthen the small business customer base, and pushed for additional revenue options.

This small business agenda presents a sharp counterpoint to the positions staked out by corporate executives and Wall Street CEOs, including the “Fix the Debt” CEO council and the Tax Relief Coalition, ahead of the lame duck session of Congress scheduled to start next week.

The small business letter reads, in part:

If we’ve learned anything from the economic forecasts about the so-called “fiscal cliff,” it is that austerity policies won’t work any better in America than they have in Europe. Austerity-driven budget cuts won’t create an economic miracle, they’ll force our economy back into recession and kick off a downward spiral.

While Wall Street CEOs who have bet their futures on overseas markets may be content with a program of deep domestic cuts, for small businesses that rely on a local customer base here at home this fact holds true: we can’t cut our way to prosperity. We need to grow our way to prosperity. Growth requires investment and investment requires resources. This is why Congress must put meaningful new revenue options on the table in the lame duck session.

As a country, we’ve tried listening to Wall Street. That strategy hasn’t worked for most Americans and it hasn’t worked for small businesses. While the banks got bailouts and Wall Street rebounded to post new record profits, small businesses took it on the chin. It’s time for a change. It’s time to listen to Main Street.

The full letter is available here.