Adoption of House Budget Resolution Brings Congress One Step Closer to Gutting Programs Benefiting Small Businesses

“The budget resolution adopted by Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives brings Congress one step closer to gutting programs that many small businesses and their employees rely on for access to healthcare and sources of capital. 

We’re most concerned about the increasing likelihood of cuts that would impact Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies, Medicaid and Medicare. Millions of small business owners and their employees rely on Medicaid, Medicare and the ACA marketplaces for affordable healthcare coverage. In fact, more than half of ACA marketplace enrollees and working Medicaid recipients own or work for a small business. 

We’re also worried about $230 billion in proposed cuts to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) programs that would devastate millions of rural small businesses and farmers who depend on USDA loans and grants, such as the Business and Industry Loan Program, the Intermediary Relending Program, and the Rural Microentrepreneur Assistance Program (RMAP), to sustain and expand their operations. 

Small businesses should not be forced to pay for Trump administration tax policy priorities that benefit the largest and wealthiest corporations and individuals. Instead, we should close tax loopholes that prevent big businesses from paying their fair share, increase the corporate tax rate to 28% and address the current distributional disparities within the Sec. 199A pass-through deduction by replacing it with a bottom-up benefit that would allow small businesses to deduct a set dollar amount of $25,000, for example, of their qualified business income. Doing so would not only provide more targeted relief to the smallest businesses, it would also significantly reduce the cost of the deduction by billions of dollars annually. And rather than slashing health benefits, enacting a common-sense ‘same service, same price’ policy to curb hospital price gouging would save the government an estimated $157 billion.

Given the devastating impact that this House Republican-backed budget would have on small businesses, we ask that the U.S. Senate reject the current package in favor of providing relief and support for small businesses and farmers that are already struggling in the face of steep new tariffs, federal funding freezes and mass deportations that are impacting the workforce.”