Small business will test its political muscle next week when Congress takes up a vote on the minimum wage and considers a $7-billion package of small business tax measures.
The last time the minimum wage was raised, in 1989, the voice of small business was barely a whisper over the roar of labor unions and big corporations.
But this time, small business has dominated the debate.
Although the half-dozen Washington-based small-business lobbies have not beat back the pay raise--a potent election-year issue--they nonetheless managed to wring out as compensation a list of long-sought-after measures that are likely to pass Monday.
"The small-business lobby hasn't always been so successful, but after the White House Conference on Small Business in 1995, things began to change," said Judith Meador, publisher and editor of the St. Louis Small Business Monthly.
Congress and President Clinton "have begun to realize that big business is laying people off and that future jobs are going to come from small business," Meador said.
Small-business associations now are considered key economic players in debates on the Hill, said Bennie Thayer, head of the National Assn. for the Self-Employed. Small-business leaders get quoted in the media more frequently than many Congressional members, and top-ranking Capitol politicians ask them to help write pro-small-business legislation, said Jamie Wickett, a lobbyist for the National Federation of Independent Business.
Joel Kotkin, a senior fellow with the Pepperdine University Institute for Public Policy, believes that although small business still lacks the clout wielded by big corporations, labor unions and teachers, ignoring small business today is risky for politicians.
"If you hurt small business . . . they can make things happen," Kotkin said. "It doesn't take that much of small business to switch over to a political party to make a big difference."
Key to the change in the political climate has been the trend of downsizing. Many of the employees shed by Fortune 500 companies and federal, state and local governments have gone on to start their own companies.
With 54% of the nation's employees currently working in small businesses and 98% of all jobs since 1989 being created by businesses with fewer than four employees, Congressional leaders have come to recognize that small-business issues are the nation's economic issues, small-business leaders say.
