Budgets and Taxes
As small businesses, we are working hard to keep our doors open, keep up with rising health care costs, provide good jobs, and give back to our communities. We are doing our part to strengthen the economy, and we need lawmakers to help by making responsible investments in education, health care, roads, and infrastructure.
These investments cannot continue if we keep giving tax cuts to the wealthiest people and large corporations in this country.
As small business owners we believe in giving back to our communities. It’s only reasonable to ask those who have benefited the most from societal investments, and have prospered from deep tax cuts in the last decade, to contribute fairly to the critical public investments that benefit all small businesses and our communities.
SEATTLE TIMES :: A Bank of Washington could help state businesses on road to recovery
In a guest column to the Seattle Times, Main Street Alliance of Washington members Makini Howell (Plum Bistro, Seattle) and Gregg Lanza (Noble Horse Gallery, Oak Harbor) make the case for creating a state community investment bank, modeled after the Bank of North Dakota.
For more than 90 years, the Bank of North Dakota has partnered with local community banks to boost small-business and family-farmer lending. The bank returns profits to the state’s general fund, easing the responsibility of taxpayers for funding important state priorities. The Bank of North Dakota enjoys broad bipartisan support and has contributed to the state’s healthy economy, which boasts the lowest unemployment rate in the country and a state budget in surplus.
Read the full column here.