Small Businesses Not Doing Their Fair Share for the Jobs Recovery, Because They Hate America

Here we are nine or ten months into the Obama economic boom, and still the president who vowed to focus on "jobs, jobs, jobs" (or actually, the most recent president to vow to focus on "job, jobs, jobs") is unable to show any growth in employment.

What does President Obama have to do? He spends hundreds of billions of dollars on makework projects. He orders companies to pay their interns. He begs banks to start lending again. He turns everything from government contracting to student loans into a jobs-creation battleground. And still the jobs just won't come falling out of the sky.

It must be a conspiracy. But who are the villains? Insurance companies? Unscrupulous lenders? Republicans?

Maybe it's small businesses. Last year Obama praised small business owners as the engine of job creation. But according to Constant Contact's 2010 Small Business Attitudes & Outlook Survey, the ingrates have responded by not hiring anybody.

Although 70 percent of the 6,800 small businesses surveyed expect to grow over the next year, 61 percent say they do not plan to hire any new employees in that period.

What could cause such an unpatriotic attitude? Sure, 65 percent of small business owners say their costs of doing business have increased, and 45 percent say taxes have been the most significant portion of that increase. And cross-referencing Constant Contact's figures with this month's Index of Small Business Optimism from the National Federation of Independent Business, we find that small business owners are feeling unprecedented pessimism about their future prospects.

That kind of crappy attitude has no place in America. The solution is clear: The Department of Labor needs to order small businesses to start hiring people, at higher wages, with coverage for pre-existing conditions. And we should probably raise their taxes to make sure they get the message.