Hillary Clinton Announces Plan to Boost Small Businesses

On Tuesday, Hillary Clinton announced a plan she would introduce as president to boost small businesses. She introduced her plan in an article for LinkedIn followed by a teleconference with members of the press and several small business owners. Clinton warned of Donald Trump’s past business practices with small businesses arguing that a Trump presidency would not be good for small business owners. The comprehensive plan builds on her overall economic plan which would create millions of jobs by investing in infrastructure upgrades and clean energy. Small businesses play into her overall plan as they will provide American workers and products. An outline of the plan is below and the full plan is available on The Briefing.

1. Make it easier to start a business and become profitable
   • Push states to make it faster and cheaper to start a business
   • Working with states to standardize licensing requirements
   • Making technical assistance and resources available to states
   • Provide incubators, mentoring, and training to 50,000 entrepreneurs and small business owners in underserved communities
2. Make it easier to get financing and find investors
   • Streamline regulation and cut red tape for community banks and credit unions
   • Harness the potential of online lending platforms
   • Reduce the burden of student debt by allowing entrepreneurs to defer student loan payment
   • Promote the 100% tax exclusion on capital gains for long-term small business investments
   • Expand and streamline the SBA’s Small Business Investment Company program
   • Support new innovative ways to assess creditworthiness for small business owners
   • Expand access to credit in underserved communities
   • Give the SBA administrator the authority to continue providing 7(a) loan guarantees to small businesses
   • Expand access to working capital by expanding the SBA’s working capital guarantee programs
3. Make it cheaper and faster to file taxes and pay for tax relief
   • Work to create a new standard deduction for small businesses
   • Allow 4 million small businesses with gross receipts under $1 million to take advantage of “checkbook accounting”
   • Allow small businesses to immediately expense up to $1 million in new investments
   • Quadruple the start-up tax deduction to significantly lower the cost of starting a business
4. Make it easier to offer health care and other benefits to employees
   • Simplify and expand the healthcare tax credit
   • Allow more small businesses pool together to offer retirement plans
5. Make it easier to work with the federal government
   • Work to completely revamp the digital experience for small businesses
   • Use the leverage of more than $400 billion in federal government contracting to encourage businesses to pay their suppliers in full and on time
   • Guarantee a 24-hour response time to small businesses with questions about federal regulations and access to capital programs
   • Ensure that Small Business Development Centers are placed in the highest-need communities with staff that speaks the language of local residents
   • Work to ensure that federal regulations aren’t unnecessarily holding small businesses and our economy back
   • Increase federal contracting opportunities for women-owned, minority-owned, and veteran-owned small businesses
   • Defend and strengthen the Export-Import Bank
   • Encourage small business exports by expanding SBA funding for export development
6. Make it easier to fight back when you’re getting stiffed

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News Source: LinkedIn, The Briefing, Bloomberg, Forbes

Hillary and Bill Clinton Campaign in Indiana

On Tuesday while five states in the Northeast voted, Hillary Clinton turned her focus to Indiana which holds their primary on May 3. She focused on manufacturing today stopping at two local manufacturers. Hillary began in Hammond where she toured and spoke to employees at Munster Steel Co. She then traveled to employees at AM General in Mishawaka. At both stops, Hillary touted her “Make it in America” manufacturing plan and her focus on keeping jobs in America. She praised AM General for their steel work for German car company Mercedes-Benz saying, “You have Mercedes-Benz vehicles, a German company’s vehicles, being made here in this great American plant and being exported to China. So that proves if we are smart and we are determined, we can out-work and out-compete anybody anywhere, and that is my goal.” A video of Hillary’s speech in Hammond is below.

Bill Clinton also made a stop in Indiana today and held an organizing event in Indianapolis. Speaking for nearly forty minutes, Bill covered a number of Hillary’s platform topics and criticized her Democratic rival Bernie Sanders for his plans which he called unrealistic. Bill also spoke about Hillary’s manufacturing plan and rewarding companies that keep their plants in United States. Other topics Bill covered included the economy, education, and labor unions. A video of his speech is below.

For all the latest, follow our Scheduled Events page and follow Clinton on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

News Source: WGNTV, WNDU, South Bend Tribune, Indy Star