Small Business News

| Blue Virginia

“A state-run paid family and medical leave program gives small businesses like mine a better opportunity at retaining, recruiting employees and competing with larger companies for quality talent,” said Shirley Mae Modlin, owner of 3D Design and Manufacturing, LLC and member of Small Business Majority’s Virginia Small Business Council. “Implementing paid family and medical leave is a commonsense policy that the Commonwealth should get behind. I hope policymakers will do right for our state’s small business community and pass SB 373 and HB 737.”

| Associated Press

Founder and CEO Clifton Broumand usually gets a shipment of components about once a month, but the latest delivery, which departed Asia four weeks ago, is delayed. The normal route — three weeks via the Suez Canal — has been shut down by the Houthi attacks.

| Valdosta Daily Times

With only a few weeks left in our 40-day 2024 legislative session, Governor Kemp and the Georgia General Assembly still have a tremendous opportunity to use the current budget to ensure the small business community has access to essential health and tax benefits.

| KOAT 7

Some business owners support the bill like the owner of Cafe Castro in Santa Fe, Alma Castro. “We shouldn't be hesitant to change. I think that the legislators and the Small Business Majority have done a really good job doing the research and understanding that we will not be going out of business if this bill were to pass,” Castro said.

| Santa Fe New Mexican

Awesta Sarkash, public policy director for national advocacy group Small Business Majority’s work in New Mexico, said it could help small businesses with limited resources recruit and retain workers. “Small businesses’ … employees often leave to work at larger businesses, sometimes in other states, undercutting our small-business economy,” she said.

| KOB 4

Supporters noted in a recent poll with more than 300 small businesses, 85% said they want a program like this.

| Fact Coalition

Watch a full recording of yesterday’s Senate Budget Committee hearing on multinational offshore tax avoidance, featuring remarks from former Treasury official Kimberly Clausing, USW’s Roy Houseman, and Small Business Majority’s John Arensmeyer.

| Richmond Times-Dispatch

Between 2015 and 2019, the average increase in the annual cost of prescription drugs rose by 26.3% for Virginians. These costs can be particularly daunting for small business owners who cite health care costs as a key factor that could harm their businesses. Annually, we are forced to make hard decisions in order to continue offering coverage.

| KOB 4

“There was a recent poll done with small business owners that show that there’s overwhelming support, I want to say 85% support for this idea,” said Tracy McDaniel, policy advocate with the Southwest Women’s Law Center.

| 21 Hats Podcast

This week, John Arensmeyer, founder and CEO of the advocacy group Small Business Majority, tells us that he senses considerable optimism among the many business owners in his network notwithstanding some concern for looming policy and economic issues. Among those issues, John tells Loren Feldman are: access to capital, the cost of health care and health insurance, relations between franchisors and franchisees, price discrimination against smaller businesses, the burden of the new Corporate Transparency Act, and the upcoming battle over the sunsetting of the Trump tax cuts.

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