No excuses and it would take much too long to explain, anyway. Suffice it to say that I’ve been having some time management issues.

This has been one of those weeks during which I felt like tearing out my hair in frustration. I don’t understand how our nation’s leaders can manage to so completely ignore the world’s second largest economy — that is, us.

Then again, I just don’t understand their thinking. They spend a lot of time, neurons and money protecting the Big Boys from the things that might hurt them, like regulations and competition from us.

We are left to sink or swim … which I guess makes sense, since they seem to be as hostile to us as our big business competitors are.

Level playing field? Don’t make me laugh.

I don’t spend this entire issue of the News Briefs snarling … honest!

For more information:

• Senate Committee on Finance
• National Association for the Self Employed
• National Small Business Association
• National Small Business Week
• House Committee on Small Business
• House Small Business Committee Democrats

Naturally, since April 15th was last week, you knew there was going to be something about everybody’s least favorite civic chore in the week’s microbusiness news, didn’t you?

I didn’t have the space in the Microbusiness News Briefs to do last week’s House Small Business Committee hearing full justice, to own the truth. Everything from Vern Buchanan’s concern about those unfortunate souls earning in excess of $250,000 in annual adjusted income to Roscoe Bartlett’s rather bizarre theory that taxing business income hurts poor people was on display.

You really just can’t make this stuff up.

That’s one of my ongoing frustrations, the difficulty in covering an event that has all kinds of complex background information attached to it. Inevitably, you have to leave things out, whether you want to or not.

(That’s also what makes The MicroEnterprise Journal a much more valuable source of information when it comes to delivering the microbusiness news.)

All of that said, the health care haggling that took over last week’s hearing on small business and taxes before the House Small Business Committee was worth the attention it got. Clearly, Congressional Republicans are on the warpath, managing to mar even the legendary bipartisan harmony on this Committee.

Also this week, an interesting hearing on minority-owned firms and access to capital (or lack thereof) and, as always, this week’s Policy Matters column.

For more information:

• House Committee on Small Business
• Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship

It brings to an end one of the ugliest political fights I’ve seen since the Civil Rights Movement. I think the New York Times’ Paul Krugman describes it well:

“[T]he emotional core of opposition to reform was blatant fear-mongering, unconstrained either by the facts or by any sense of decency.”

I want to say that, whatever your opinion of reform might be, I’d hope you can see the justice of that remark but I sincerely doubt that any of those Tea Party types would agree. Then again, judging them by their behavior at that protest last weekend, they seem to be a pack of closet Klansmen anyway.

But I digress.

Also in this week’s microbusiness news, we have patent reform redux — a new and improved reform proposal that is eerily similar to one I was writing about three years ago. And the House Small Business Committee takes a look at business incubators and job growth.

For more information:

• National Association for the Self-Employed
• House Committee on Small Business
• Press Release: Leahy, et al Unveil Details Of Patent Reform Agreement
• Small Business Patent Data Collection Act (THOMAS)

Who would have thought that a week away from home would cause this much exhaustion?

So, health care reform is back. This week, the top story looks like it will be the President’s legislative proposal — which silently says to Congress, “Well, I gave you a chance and you screwed up … ”

We’ll see how he does with this one. I suspect he is wasting his time reaching out to Republicans but they may surprise me. Stranger things have happened, although I can’t think of any right this minute.

And the SBA Office of Advocacy reminds us that the fourth quarter of last year was an economic mixed bag when it comes to the numbers. The fourth quarter indicators seem to indicate that those elusive jobs will continue to be elusive for the foreseeable future.

For more information:

• Press Release: Perriello, Markey to Introduce Bill to Strip Anti-Trust Exemption for Health Insurance Industry
• SBA Office of Advocacy
• NYT: Millions of Unemployed Face Years Without Jobs

I don’t know how well that sort of incentive would work. Small employers would no doubt welcome some sort of payroll tax holiday or cut in same. But I also think that smart small business owners won’t hire if the dibs are not in tune and this sort of tax carrot won’t get them to create jobs unless they would have created those jobs anyway.

I’ve said this before: a lot of other things have to be going right before you’re ready to start hiring. Just offering a tax break of some kind isn’t enough, from a business point of view.

This being an election year, it will be interesting to see what the economy does, how slowly or quickly it starts chugging again and when and to what degree the Democrats start to panic.

It’ll also be interesting to see whether the Republicans will be able to campaign on health care reform repeal and be successful if everybody is still kind of preoccupied with the economy.

Stay tuned.

Oh, and for the record, I will be sending out a correction in next week’s newsletters. I mistakenly reported (in the newsletters but not in this podcast) that the Labor Department had announced the loss of 68,000 jobs in December. The correct figure is 85,000 jobs lost last month. I apologize for the error.

For more information:

• Statement: President Obama Announces Proposal to Accelerate Job Growth
• National Federation of Independent Business
• The Conference Board
• Release: NASE Opposes Senate Health Reform Bill

A lot of people have said in my hearing that the don’t understand why President Obama is in such a hurry to get health care reform passed but it makes perfect sense to me. If he doesn’t do it now, there is an increasing chance that he won’t be able to get it done at all.

It’s still a year away but those midterm elections have already started to loom in menacing fashion.

That fistful of small business bills covered in this week’s number two story are not especially important in and of themselves except for what they hint about the unexpectedly tortuous process of passing legislation to reauthorize SBA programs and improve them at the same time — even when the same political party is running the show in both chambers of Congress.

Besides, it really is rare for that many pieces of small business legislation to hit the House floor at more or less the same time. That, by itself, is noteworthy.

And I’ll be keeping an eye on that upcoming White House Forum on Jobs and Economic Growth. I’m very curious to see what the guest list ends up looking like.

For further information:

• National Small Business Association
• National Association for the Self-Employed
• H.R. 1839 – To amend the Small Business Act to improve SCORE
• H.R. 3014 – Small Business Health Information Technology Financing Act
• H.R. 1834 – Native American Business Development Enhancement Act of 2009
• H.R. 1842 – Expanding Entrepreneurship Act of 2009
• H.R. 3738 – Small Business Early-Stage Investment Act of 2009
• The President Announces Forum on Jobs and Economic Growth

Now that the House has passed a health care reform measure, all eyes will be turning back to the Senate to see how much that chamber’s arcane rules add drama and interest to the proceedings there.

If other committees outside the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship are really interested in learning more about small businesses and health insurance, they could save themselves some hassle and simply visit the record of the expert committee here.

Then again, I don’t know how much time anybody has left here, so I doubt there will be that many hearings about small businesses to be had in the near future.

It’s always strange when the economy is doing one set of stuff but people’s perceptions have gone off in the completely opposite direction. The recession has not been officially declared to be over yet but both the housing and manufacturing sector have picked up just enough to be encouraging.

You can see the difference between consumer confidence, small business confidence and CEO confidence. Of that group, it’s the CEOs who are feeling a lot better these days. The rest of us are still waiting on the job market.

Plus, the ARRA and broadband deployment, and this week’s Policy Matters column, in today’s podcast.

For more information:

• Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
• The Conference Board
• National Federation of Independent Business
• House Committee on Small Business

Raw Voice (owners of Blubrry.com, the podcast network to which the Microbusiness News Briefs belongs) and several other podcasting companies have joined with The Association for Downloadable Media (ADM) on the “Consumers Attitudes on Advertising & Sponsorship in Audio and Video Podcasts” research project.

The project is a survey that should take about 10 minutes to complete and does NOT ask for personal contact information. The survey will record audience reactions to topics such as ad style, delivery and placement. The research will help podcast producers best fulfill the expectations of their listeners and viewers.

If you are willing to take a few minutes to complete the survey (and I hope you will), please visit http://www.takethesurvey.com/rawvoice. And thank you for your help!

Health care reform is back and the number one topic of the week, with two of our three stories focusing on that very interesting topic. The Senate Small Business Committee leadership (Landrieu and Snowe) are concerned about some of the issues facing the self-employed that are not addressed in proposed reform legislation. The NASE is concerned about that, too.

I don’t know why but … you’d think that eventually people would get it that they don’t get it, wouldn’t you? Personal paradigms are powerful persuaders.

Rounding out the weeks news is a recent proposal that says to businesses, “We don’t need you to site your factory or call center in our community. We just need you to hire our rural and small town constituents to telework for you. Isn’t technology wonderful?” New wrinkle on an old economic development tactic.

For more information:

• Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship
• National Association for the Self-Employed (NASE)
• (THOMAS) Rural and Small Town Telework Tax Credit Act of 2009 (H.R. 3627)

This Congressional session has been a peculiar one so far, simply because there has been the usual amount of hot air expended on Capitol Hill but it all seems to be expended in discussing only one or two topics.

One might argue about how well lawmakers walk and chew gum at the same time but, I’ll confess, now that everybody has turned themselves into Johnny-One-Note, covering Capitol Hill is not at its most interesting.

This week, we have small businesses and access to capital (Microloan with a twist), the tax gap, and small firms and health care reform. There will be more on that last subject next week; Senate Small Business Committee Chairwoman Mary Landrieu will convene a hearing on that subject later this week.

For more information:

• House Small Business Committee
• GAO Report: Limiting Sole Proprietor Loss Deductions Could Improve Compliance but Would Also Limit Some Legitimate Losses (PDF)
• Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship

Health care reform is still the song of the day for our Johnny One Note federal government. Not that I blame them; it’s a big enough issue with enough opposition that it is going to take this kind of focus to get the job done.

That is, if they do manage to get the job done. That is by no means certain at this point.

Meanwhile, the other big story of the … well, of the year, really, is the economy. It’s looking like we may have hit bottom. The real question (that nobody is asking or they’re not asking out loud) is whether we’re going to start climbing up from said bottom or whether we’re going to be swimming around down here for awhile.

For more information:

National Association for the Self-Employed
Small Business Majority
National Federation of Independent Business
National Small Business Association
The Conference Board
National Women’s Business Council