BOND: BIG GOVERNMENT NOT THE ANSWER

"Small business owners have always been the backbone of America's - and Missouri's - economy," said Bond. "Unfortunately I believe much of what is being implemented in Washington is going to be counterproductive to the economy - and small business - in the long run."

At today's forum, Bond, a member of the Senate's Small Business Committee, stressed that small businesses are the backbone of America's economy. Bond recognized the difficulties small businesses are having to just stay in business, not to mention create new jobs. The economic crisis - the worst in generations - has put a strain on families and businesses across the nation.

Unfortunately, Washington policies are making a difficult problem even worse. Bond highlighted recent efforts to grow the government over the last six months - from spending a trillion dollars on the misnamed "stimulus" bill; to taking over most of the domestic auto industry; to proposing a government takeover of health care; to a proposed new energy tax.

Bond pointed out that with this unprecedented growth of government, it's no surprise that the federal deficit for this year has already reached $1.3 trillion -- $300 billion in July alone. The Democrats' so-called trillion dollar stimulus plan has failed to live up to expectations. Instead of gaining jobs 2.8 million have been lost, despite the President's promise that his bill would create or save 3.5 million jobs and keep the unemployment rate at no more than 8 percent. Bond, who opposed the stimulus bill, pointed out that the funds have not been spent on "shovel-ready" projects, instead the vast majority of the $73 billion of the $787 billion already spent has been on non-infrastructure related items. Only $1.1 billion in infrastructure has been spent - about .014 percent - not even close to a rounding number, Bond emphasized.

Unfortunately, the President's budget is equally as bad for the economy, Bond stressed. The

President's budget "buster" will run a deficit of about $1 trillion every year for the next ten years. This will double our national debt in 5 years, and triple it in 10, leaving our children and grandchildren to foot the bill. For the small businesses at today's forum, Bond pointed out that, the President's budget would raise taxes on already struggling small businesses.

The Senator emphasized that plans to grow the government further will only make the climate for our small businesses even worse. The Democrat's proposal for a government takeover of health care would cause the loss of more than 1.6 million jobs in 5 years, more than 1 million of those jobs in small businesses, according to the National Federation of Independent Businesses. In addition, the Cap and Trade proposal that passed the House would kill manufacturing jobs and export them to lower-cost countries like China. This would be devastating to states like Missouri, which lost 3,700 manufacturing jobs in May and an additional 2,500 in June. These big government proposals are not the answer, stressed Bond.

"We have answers to America's problems that do not require massive spending, deficits and the expansion of government," said Bond. "This country's future success - like its past success - depends far more on empowering individual Americans than empowering giant government."

#DAL1234#

For full details on (SBCOE) SBCOE. (SBCOE) has Short Term PowerRatings at TradingMarkets. Details on (SBCOE) Short Term PowerRatings is available at This Link.