One of the encouraging signs we’ve taken from Mayor de Blasio’s vision for the city is his support for small businesses. Gov. Cuomo also talks about the need to help businesses grow. Well, here’s a way they can help: Demand relief from ObamaCare.
As The Post reported this week, the National Federation of Independent Businesses has just warned that, among 11,000 members it represents in New York, it can’t find a single one that will see its health-care costs drop under ObamaCare. Indeed, NFIB’s New York director, Mike Durant, says that an “overwhelming majority” of the businesses his group has canvassed are reporting hikes in their insurance rates.
It’s just one more mandate on businesses in a state that’s got more than its share.
De Blasio certainly knows about that. In a report last February, he called small businesses “the growth engine in New York” and decried “the deluge of fines” and regulations they face. Gov. Cuomo, too, has been touting his commitment to transforming state government to help “local businesses open and grow in New York.”
De Blasio and Cuomo are right. New York is one of the toughest and most expensive places to run a business — especially a mom-and-pop shop, the kind that provides so many of our local jobs. The state’s highest-in-the-nation tax burden, maze of regulations and increasingly steep fines don’t help. Yet now these businesses face additional burdens as a result of ObamaCare.
Both these men are on good terms with ObamaCare’s namesake, President Obama. That puts them in a unique position to push for relief for our small businesses.
That is, if they are really as committed to small business as they claim.