Giving the business

Making payroll in Washington is pretty simple stuff. When the federal government can't make its nut -- which happens every month -- it borrows big bucks to cover operating expenses. Businesses, though, can't put payroll on a credit card for long before inviting bankruptcy.

Deficit spending has been embraced by Republicans and Democrats alike for decades, but taken to new extremes by the economically disconnected Obama administration. The White House, from top to bottom, is loaded with academics, agitators and lifetime public employees, and lacking anyone with significant experience starting, running or working for a business.

All of which helps explain the latest attempt by President Obama and Democrats to paint themselves as advocates for the squealing private sector. They're convinced that if only small businesses had more access to borrowing, they could start hiring.

The president used a Wednesday visit to a New Jersey sandwich shop to tout a bill that would let community banks tap a $30 billion government fund (all borrowed from somewhere else, of course), and use that capital to extend up to $300 billion in loans to small businesses. The legislation also includes limited tax breaks for those businesses.

Perhaps if Mr. Obama or any of his advisers had actually talked to struggling small business owners, they might have learned that the last thing any limping enterprise needs or wants in this economy is more debt.

Yes, some credit-worthy companies might be able to grow sales by purchasing new equipment or refinancing existing debt. But most are looking for the same two things: lower taxes and paying customers with jobs. And the Obama-Reid-Pelosi cabal is instead promising higher taxes, which will cost even more Americans their jobs.

Senate Republicans succeeded in blocking the bill Thursday because Democrats wouldn't consider GOP amendments to extend other tax breaks -- relief that might actually help businesses.

The hypocrisy and election-year posturing of Washington Democrats is pretty galling, even by the low standards they've set over the past four years. They demand that businesses start hiring the unemployed, yet they're relentlessly pursuing an economically destructive agenda that piles new regulations and uncertainty on employers and the investors they depend on. From health care reform to financial reform to cap-and-trade, from the looming expiration of the Bush tax cuts to talk of a national sales tax, they're giving businesses more and more reasons not to hire.

Businesses have to increase their sales before they even think of hiring, let alone borrowing. What good is a tax break for restaurants and retailers that remodel their locations or open new ones -- as this new legislation proposes -- when they don't have enough customers to cover the debt payments on all those new costs?

If the president and Congress are serious about helping small businesses, they need to cut taxes and quit spending money they don't have.