Ortiz: How a Group Calling Itself the ‘Small Business Majority’ Works to Harm Small Businesses

Alfredo Ortiz writes in the Washington Examiner about a liberal funded organization called the Small Business Majority which is advocating against  innovations such as association health plans as an alternative to high cost Obamacare:

What if there were a small business advocacy group that spent its time advocating for policies that hurt small businesses?

Such a group exists. It’s called the Small Business Majority, or SBM.

Funded with millions of dollars from big liberal foundations like Ford and Robert Wood Johnson, SBM spends its time taking the other side of the biggest issues facing small businesses, including regulations, taxes, and healthcare. It supports higher minimum wages and additional workplace mandates, both of which harm job creation. It opposed the recent tax cuts that delivered the biggest tax cut to small businesses in U.S. history. And it supports Obamacare.

SBM’s latest policy position that doesn’t represent small business interests is its opposition to the forthcoming expansion of association health plans, or AHPs, which allow small businesses to band together to purchase less expensive health insurance. John Arensmeyer, SBM’s CEO and a longtime Bay Area Democratic operative and donor, testified before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee recently and bizarrely claimed that AHPs would be bad for small businesses. As with most of SBM’s public policy positions, the reality is just the opposite.

Read the rest of the article here.