Senators display their true opinion of small businesses

Posted on | November 13, 2008 |

Back when I was in the second grade, I learned a little song from Sister Mary Jared. I don’t remember the tune but I do remember the chorus — the punchline, if you will:

Your actions speak so loudly that I cannot hear your words.

Of course, that’s a recurring theme with which we instruct our children and pepper our cliches, isn’t it? If you think about it, what is it other than a more elegant version of ‘talk is cheap’?

Anyway, I bring up all this lofty speculation because of this article I read in yesterday’s Washington Post.

The article is all about the decidedly unlofty fact that Senate Democrats are just a tad PO’ed at Joe Lieberman — no surprises there. However, everybody’s bipartisan pal, Barack Obama, wants Senate Democrats to kiss (or ~insert other appropriately affectionate activity~) and make up, which kind of puts Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in a delicate position.

But never mind all that. Check out the last few paragraphs of the article.

Now, bear in mind how often you have heard one or another member of either chamber of Congress talk about how important small businesses are, ‘engine of the economy’ and other by-now-boring bits of boilerplate. And yet, in the Congressional committee hierarchy, let’s face it: the Small Business Committee is the ghetto.

You see that? That’s what they’re threatening Lieberman with as punishment: give up chairing the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs and take over chairing the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship. That’s one step above getting tossed out of the caucus altogether and told, “Okay, we’ve had enough of you, Joe, go vote with the Republicans.”

And before you conclude that this is a particularly Democratic disease, I would just point out to you that Senate Republicans expressed their appreciation of the job Liddy Dole did as Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair for the 2006 election cycle by assigning her to the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship.

(In justice to Senate Republicans, they didn’t take any of her other assignments away from her. They just added this one. Sort of like a punctuation mark.)

All of which, whatever your opinion of Joe Lieberman or Liddy Dole, tells you a lot about what members of the Senate really think about small business.


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Dawn Rivers Baker, microbusiness journalistDawn Rivers Baker, aka The Journal Blogger, is the editor and publisher of The MicroEnterprise Journal, and the self-proclaimed Socrates of the small business blogosphere. See her official bio to learn more.


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