One of the more interesting things that happens when the House and Senate are divided along partisan lines — you know, where one party holds the House and the other holds the Senate — is the way that you can have hearings on exactly the same topic in the two chambers that sound so very different.

It only stands to reason. After all, one of the reasons why Democrats are not Republicans, and vice versa, is that they care about different stuff.

That can make it seem like you really are a traveler — a space traveler — when you get to listen to what happens when such a pair of hearings takes place.

Unfortunately, it’s tough to get a full sense of that from news briefs. If you have about five hours to spare and you find political theater entertaining, I recommend that you go to the Committees’ respective web sites to listen in on the relevant hearings.

Who knows, you might find it eye-opening.

For more information:

• House Committee on Small Business
• Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship
• Small Business Contracting: Action Needed By Those Agencies Whose Advocates Do Not Report To Agency Heads As Required (PDF)

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

The fact that he didn’t succeed was probably one of the most consistently bipartisan things that happened in a Washington that had been taken over by rabid partisanship.

Looking back, it was quite remarkable, really.

I won’t argue with the principle that belt-tightening is a very much needed thing but it’s interesting that he should choose to tightening the federal government’s belt on the backs of the low-income entrepreneur.

That seems wildly inappropriate. In fact, it seems like something President Bush would have done.

Microloan has a lot of friends on Capitol Hill and, specifically, on the Senate Small Business Committee. It might even have some friends left on the House Small Business Committee.

Given the history, it will be interesting to see what happens here.

Besides that and this week’s lead story, we have a brief check-in with the economy and the curious way the unemployment rate has fallen when job creation remains startlingly low.

And, of course, this week’s Policy Matter’s column — all about adjusting expectations.

For more information:

• House Judiciary Committee (Hearing Archive)
• NSBA Budget Overview
• AEO Blog
• Bureau of Economic Analysis
• U.S. Department of Labor
• U.S. Department of Commerce
• National Federation of Independent Business
• The Conference Board

But I wouldn’t be doing my job if I were to pretend it didn’t happen, now wouldn’t I?

As far as the President’s policy priorities are concerned — and particularly when it comes to small business policy — there was absolutely no suspense and there were no surprises, either.

The advantage of having no surprises to report is that it allows you to have already gotten your disappointment out of the way early. By now, I expect you are merely resigned.

Meanwhile, the SBA Office of Advocacy released the 2009 edition of their annual State of Small Business report to the President. You can find my article covering the report from the more general small business angle at Small Business Trends. In this week’s podcast, I get a bit more micro-specific.

In addition, this week we have the ongoing search for “waste, fraud and abuse,” now in fashion in Washington, and this week’s Policy Matters.

For more information:

• State of the Union Address (video)
• State of the Union: Republican Response (YouTube)
• SBA Office of Advocacy
• Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship

I guess I figured the newly elected and re-elected Republican majority was so very gung-ho to get going that they would have gotten all that stuff done in record time. I guess some things never change.

I have to tell you, though, that while I was agreeably surprised by Chairman Sam Graves’ Web 2.0 savvy (although I expect I should really just be impressed by his staff’s Web 2.0 savvy), I am still longing for somebody in his position to really surprise me.

For all the partisan Capitol Hill scuffling and sniping that I’ve been listening to over the past seven years, policy makers on both sides of the aisle are very, very close in their views on what makes for good small business policy, what small businesses need and how best to meet those needs.

I haven’t heard anybody volunteer the information that they’ve learned enough about microbusinesses to warrant a bit of investigation, perhaps a hearing or two that will create the beginnings of a record to document the unique needs of microbusinesses.

I also haven’t heard anybody say that maybe we need a better understanding of how microbusinesses and nonemployers fit into the overall economy.

For that matter, nobody on Capitol Hill has even noticed the changing nature of the labor force.

Any of that stuff would be truly, eye-sparklingly exciting! Ah well …

I also wanted to once again draw your attention to the heads-up in this week’s news about the FTC being poised to formulate some industry self-regulation (that may turn into actual legislation down the road) on consumer privacy and behavioral advertising.

The FTC needs to hear from microbusinesses and their advocates on this one. There are links below (in the For more information section below) that will get you to the preliminary report and the page to submit comments. I doubt this is going to be one of those sets of regulations that won’t apply to microbusinesses, so let them hear from you!

Also on this week’s agenda: regulatory reform from the right and the left, and this week’s Policy Matters.

For more information:

• House Small Business Committee
• Executive Order: Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review
• Presidential Memorandum: Regulatory Flexibility, Small Business, and Job Creation
• Federal Trade Commission preliminary report on consumer privacy (PDF)
• Federal Trade Commission questions for comment (PDF)
• Federal Trade Commission comment submission page

Nina Olsen, in case you didn’t know, is the National Taxpayer Advocate. A few years ago, when she named the tax gap as the top taxpayer challenge for fiscal 2004 and simultaneously nailed Schedule C filers as an entire class of tax cheats, she seemed like Microbusiness Public Enemy #1.

This year, she is letting everybody know that those new 1099 reporting requirements are absurd. So, now, it’s more like We Love Nina, right?

Besides taxes, there’s more political gyrations around what Congress can and should be and will do for small businesses and whether, as usual, all of that will turn out to be useless for microbusinesses.

There’s new numbers out this week, as well, and another edition of Policy Matters.

For more information:

• FY2010 National Taxpayer Advocate Report To Congress (PDF)
• Senators Reid, Landrieu Join SBA Administrator Mills To Discuss Support for Small Business
• U.S. Census Bureau: Survey of Business Owners
• Microbusiness Conversations

Take this debacle with the nomination of Dr. Winslow Sargeant. Personally, given that it is not required by statute for the Chief Counsel of the SBA Office of Advocacy to be a lawyer, Senator Olympia Snowe’s intransigence about it strikes me as being a bit unreasonable … even irrational.

-ahem-

Do you really have to be a lawyer in order to go to bat for small businesses that are regularly browbeaten by federal regulations? I wouldn’t have thought so, not when there are attorneys on staff at Advocacy and when the real experts on the subject are small business owners on those Advocacy panels I keep hearing about.

On the Senate floor, Senator Mary Landrieu mentioned that when the economy is in the sort of shambles it’s in right now, this is not the time to withhold any sort of resource for small businesses — including their very own advocate within the federal government.

She’s right. And, just between us, I sure hope they get this resolved soon!

So, in other news … anybody taking bets on whether the federal budget will get cobbled together, passed by both the House and the Senate, and all 12 bills signed into law before the close of the fiscal year on September 30th?

Nah, I didn’t think so.

For more information:

• Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship
• Status of Fiscal 2011 Appropriations Bills (THOMAS)
• SBA Office of Advocacy

Are you excited?

Last week, President Obama signed the relevant proclamation, which proclaimed, in part:

In this year’s State of the Union address, I proposed creating a $30 billion lending fund to help increase the flow of credit to small businesses, and I call on the Congress to pass this legislation quickly. My Administration is also working to extend and enhance Small Business Administration programs that have helped small business owners acquire loans and hire workers.

This week, we celebrate the role of entrepreneurs and small businesses in our national life. They are the engine of our prosperity and a proud reflection of our character. A healthy small business sector will give us vibrant communities, cutting-edge technology, and an American economy that can compete and win in the 21st century.

Because never let it be said that a president lost an opportunity to pat himself on the back — presumably because nobody else ever wants to do it, right?

So, this week’s news includes the latest effort to spur small business lending (likely to be fairly useless for most microbusinesses) and the latest dynamic jobs data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, showing that small businesses — including microbusiness employers — really were creating jobs during the third quarter of 2009, just like everybody said they wanted them to.

All this and another Policy Matters column, too.

For more information:

• House Committee on Financial Services
• Bureau of Labor Statistics

If you’re wondering if I may have filled the bong a little too early this morning, that greeting will make sense to you after you hear this week’s Policy Matters column.

As for the news, it’s always interesting to me when Congress slaps a “small business” label on some piece of legislation that is useless for nine out of ten small businesses in the country. When giant agri-business corporations do that, they get in trouble with people yelling things like “truth in labeling!”

There is no truth in labeling in either politics or public policy. It’s very sad.

We have a summary of economic data, with the promise of an update in the near future. And Microloan Intermediaries and Women’s Business Centers are having a tough time with funding but, fortunately for them, Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) has donned her red cape and S tee shirt, and leaps to the rescue.

That’s quite an image, actually, but of course that’s all metaphorically speaking.

For more information:

• House Committee on Ways and Means
• Bureau of Labor Statistics
• National Federation of Independent Business
• The Conference Board
• Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship

There are a few issues, not really very many. There’s taxes and regulations and federal procurement and technology-related stuff and access to capital.

These issues never actually go away. The just get recycled every year.

Lawmakers never seem able to solve them or even to make a significant dent in solving them. Well, no, I take that back. President Bush and former Advocacy Chief Counsel made a healthy dent in Regulatory Flexibility Act enforcement with Executive Order 13272.

Except, of course, that whenever Congress makes widespread changes to the RFA or to the federal regulatory landscape, that makes another round of RFA compliance training that Advocacy will have to do.

The other problems just seem intransigent, and none moreso than small businesses and federal procurement. It issue and its component parts never change and Congress seems wholly incapable of coming up with effective solutions to those problems.

Federal procurement is on the docket today, along with a follow-up on the nomination of Dr. Winslow Sargeant for Advocacy Chief Counsel and research on retirement savings behavior among small business owners and employees.

And, as always, my weekly Policy Matters column, in which I contemplate the symptoms of insanity sometimes displayed by members of Congress.

For more information:

• House Committee on Small Business
• Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship
• SBA Office of Advocacy