The Small Business Watchdog

Each week while Congress is in session the Office of Advocacy will post a highlights schedule of congressional hearings and committee markups that we think will be of interest to stakeholders in the small business community. For further information on the hearings in question please contact the relevant congressional committee.
THIS WEEK
The chambers’ conferees resume negotiations [...]

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The Obama Administration claims it can save businesses $10 billion over five years. Businesses and Republicans give the White House review an “incomplete”
By John Tozzi
Since the early 1990s, gas stations have had to equip pumps with nozzles to capture fuel vapors that escape from tanks as drivers fill up. The government mandated the vapor-recovery systems, which [...]

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Rep. Denny Rehberg voted last year to undermine the Clean Water Act. He claims to have done so to empower states and to save businesses from hidden taxes incurred by their forced compliance with federal regulations.
Unfortunately, the lack of overarching controls would empower only polluters, and Rehberg’s efforts would have the ironic effect of undermining [...]

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Each week while Congress is in session the Office of Advocacy will post a highlights schedule of congressional hearings and committee markups that we think will be of interest to stakeholders in the small business community. For further information on the hearings in question please contact the relevant congressional committee.
THIS WEEK
The House and Senate are [...]

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By Tim Roemer, Published: January 19

The writer, a former U.S. representative from Indiana who served on the Sept. 11 Commission, is a senior vice president at APCO Worldwide.

When I went to serve as U.S. ambassador to India in 2009, I hoped to learn more about that country’s vibrant democracy and our shared values. I gained an additional benefit [...]

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How to create new jobs, spur innovation – The Hill’s Congress Blog.
On the surface, last month’s economic indicators introduce a dose of positivity into the market: the private sector added 200,000 jobs and the unemployment rate dropped to 8.5 percent, its lowest point since February 2009. But take a closer look and you’ll see that [...]

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By: Chad Brooks, BusinessNewsDaily Contributor
A new report fromCreditDonkey.comshows it takes less than $5,000 for most home-based business owners to get up and running.
The research, which details where small-business owners got their startup capital, found that while the average cost of starting a home-based business was $25,000, 39 percent of owners said it took less than $5,000, [...]

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By Andrew Chow at FindLaw.com
Wed Jan 11, 2012 8:06pm EST

In a possible sign of economic recovery, small-business lending hit a four-year high in November, a new report shows. At the same time, the number of small-business loans in delinquency declined.

The results are revealed in the Thomson Reuters/PayNet Small Business Lending Index that tracks the overall volume [...]

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Plain language in federal regulation comes closer

By Camille Tuutti
Jan 06, 2012

Federal regulations can be a maze to navigate, but the federal government this week took further steps to streamlining jargon in an effort to make rules more accessible to citizens.
Writing on the OMBlog, Cass Sunstein, administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, discussed the progress [...]

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The U.S. Senate ties up loose ends.
One of the things I couldn’t tell you about when it happened has to do with my friend, Dr. Winslow Sargeant (who is not Kellen Winslow and has never played for the San Diego Chargers), Chief Counsel of the SBA Office of Advocacy.
The sad saga of Dr. Sargeant’s nomination to the [...]

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