Obama’s War on Business is Not Over

Is there any president in recent memory who has done so much harm to America’s businesses, large and small?

President Obama has held to his instincts as a “community organizer,” viewing the business segment as “the man” oppressing the average person. Except that the average person — those who still have a job, at least — generally tend to work for the businesses Obama is killing.

Most prominently, there’s been Obamacare and its requirement that small businesses cover their employees’ health insurance or put them on a part-time footing to squeeze under the 50-worker threshold, at which the requirement kicks in. It’s a huge addition to the bottom line for many businesses that are barely profitable. Meantime, insurance rates are soaring, forcing small business owners who buy their own insurance to pay the higher rates.

The EPA is busy at work, meanwhile, on regulations that circumvent Congress, which refused to pass draconian fossil fuel production cutbacks that President Obama demanded. And the Dodd-Frank “Wall Street” reform package that Obama rammed through Congress is forcing endless compliance costs on businesses.

Obama puts a damper on business activity by bashing CEOs and a variety of legal business practices, suggesting an anti-business climate that convinces corporations they just might want to ride out his presidency before deciding to invest.

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“I don’t think there has been a president in my lifetime who has been more hostile to business than Obama,” veteran GOP consultant Ed Rogers wrote last year in the Washington Post. “I could be corrected, but I don’t think anyone in the president’s Cabinet has ever started a business, and I would doubt that many of his senior staffers have either. At the end of the day, Obama doesn’t seem to have much respect for what it takes to start a business. And this cratering in the number of start-ups under his administration reminds us of the gratuitous smackdown he gave business owners everywhere during the 2012 campaign when he pointedly said, ‘If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.'”

The results speak for themselves. Average GDP growth under Obama has been less than two percent, among the worst — if not the worst — in modern presidential history. Earnings have declined, and the number of people who have opted out of the workforce is at levels not seen in 40 years.

The president isn’t quite finished inflicting damage, preparing a “flurry” on regulations to which he wants businesses newly chained, the Wall Street Journal has reported.

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“Planned moves — across labor, health, finance and the environment — range from overtime pay for white-collar workers to more obscure matters such as requiring food makers to disclose added sugar on cartons of flavored milk,” the Journal said.

“The expected burst of regulation follows an intense few weeks in which the administration has targeted corporate tax inversions, imposed new rules on brokers and advanced restrictions on company relations with union organizers.”

Obama is rushing the rules along so that they can be written by mid-May, with the goal of finalizing before a potential Republican Congress and president overturn them. He needs to get the regulations on the books at least 60 days before a Republican president might take office.

Of course, the longer he waits, the fewer businesses there will be, reducing some of the work federal paper pushers will need to do.