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LOWERING HEALTH-CARE COSTS This is the No. 1 concern of small-business owners. According to the NFIB, 60% of the 44.3 million Americans without health insurance are entrepreneurs, their families and employees. One reason is the high cost of state-mandated insurance plans, which can require small firms to buy broad insurance policies with pricey offerings most entrepreneurs cannot afford. To help alleviate the problem, many small firms want to band together to form association health plans with national bargaining power. A bill proposed by Republican Representative James Talent of Missouri would allow this and make small business exempt from mandates too. But AHPs have strong opposition from large insurers and Democrats, including Gore, who do not favor private-sector solutions for health-care problems. Republicans, though, see AHPs as a potent plank in their election-year health-care platform. Indeed, in his $42 billion health-care reform plan, the "New Prosperity Initiative" unveiled in April, Bush proposed that AHPs be offered to small-business owners through trade associations.
Democrats: Nay Republicans: Yea
TAXING THE INTERNET On one side are state officials, who fear that tax-free e-commerce will erode sales-tax receipts. On the other side are dotcoms and antitax partisans, who argue that a sales tax would stifle e-commerce. The issue poses a dilemma for small businesses: though reflexively antitax, many believe dotcoms are reaping an unfair price advantage from the tax-free Web. Both Gore and Bush favor extending the moratorium but stop there. How tough is this issue? A blue-ribbon panel at press time voted 10-8 not to tax the Internet. Their recommendation has been sent to Congress for review. Whether the massacre on NASDAQ in mid-April will ameliorate concern about this issue on Capitol Hill remains to be seen. But experts such as Christopher Wysocki, president of the Small Business Survival Committee, a lobbying group in Washington, believe taxing e-commerce would put the entire Internet sector into a tailspin. Says Wysocki: "It would change the rules of the game for dotcom entrepreneurs, who would find it nearly impossible to collect and distribute sales tax for the 7,500 state and local taxing jursidictions across America. To survive, many would probably move their businesses offshore. That could really jeopardize the long-term health of the digital economy."
Democrats: Abstain Republicans: Abstain
This piece was written in coordination with FSB (FORTUNE Small Business) magazine