Video: Small-business America

Meet Jerry Gorski.  He owns a small business in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, not far from where Barack Obama will argue today that people who earn more than $250,000 a year need to pay their fair share.  Jerry owns his own business and employes 17 people, and has managed to weather the economic storms of the past four years — mainly by avoiding investment in his business.  Now that he’s finally been able to recalculate his business model, though, Obama wants to jack up tax rates on S-corp businesses like Gorski Engineering, and now Jerry has to put off growth-expanding activities for at least a while longer.  House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy released this video earlier today:

“This notion of $250,000 being the top 2% or the wealthy people in America ignores the way most small businesses work in America,” Jerry Gorski said in the video.  “We just went through a horrible climate where our work was off 40%…We went through every bit of money that we set aside for a rainy day but it’s been a long rainy day.  And now our company has figured out how to survive in this economy and the first thing we want to do with any income I have is tax it? That’s uncertainty.”

Gorski Engineering, founded in 1954, is a sub chapter S corporation that employs 17 people about 15 miles away from President Obama’s scheduled stop at Harfield, PA based Rodon Group Factory.

“The President is heading to Pennsylvania today in full campaign mode to make the argument to the American people that tax rate increases are the only solution to our nation’s economic woes,” McCarthy said. “He’s wrong. What our country needs is a boost in economic growth so our job creators, like Jerry Gorski, can start hiring again. Tax rate increases don’t stimulate economic growth – they drain small businesses of the capital they need to grow and expand their operation. Small businesses employ the majority of Americans and are the engines of our economy. They will also be the most adversely affected by an increase in tax rates.

“The White House proposal offered yesterday by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner shows that the Administration is interested in scoring a political victory at the expense of our country’s Jerry Gorskis. It is my hope that President Obama stops merely giving lip service to the idea of a ‘balanced approach’ to prevent the fiscal cliff and will actually come to the negotiating table where Republicans have already offered serious solutions.”

And perhaps even this might be worth it — if Obama was serious about reaching a compromise that fixed the very broken federal budget process and ended trillion-dollar deficits.  The editors of Bloomberg rip Obama and his fellow Democrats today for his lack of seriousness so far in these fiscal cliff negotiations:

One by one, congressional Republicans are revoking their no-tax-increase pledges, opening the door to a fiscal-cliff compromise. Sadly, Democrats are just as quickly closing the door by calling for tax increases now and entitlement cuts later, if at all.

Democrats have good reasons (or so they think), beginning with their interpretation of U.S. President Barack Obama’s Nov. 6 victory as a mandate to raise tax rates on the wealthy while protecting the social contract. Also, liberal groups are making political trouble for Democrats by inciting seniors to oppose any and all cuts to Medicare and Social Security.

But if Democrats refuse to control entitlements, there will be no fiscal-cliff deal. … The only question is this: If Obama was willing to adopt these reforms last year, why not now?

Jerry Gorski would probably like an answer to that question, too … since he’ll end up paying for it.

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