COLLEGE PARK — Democratic Senate hopeful Michelle Nunn rolled out an eight-point plan for strengthening small business Thursday while touring an incubator for start-ups.
Most of the items have been part of her campaign for months, such as providing infrastructure like the Port of Savannah deepening, building the Keystone Pipeline across the Midwest for energy security, a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution and lowering the corporate income-tax rate. She said ideas for it came from conversations she’s had with business owners as she’s campaigned around the state for the last year.
“What I hear repeatedly from folks is that uncertainty from Washington, and that’s everything from (the Affordable Care Act) and ‘what is that actually going to mean for my business if I have 48 members of my team’ and ‘what does that mean in terms of my growth?’ to a (house) painting company where he said, ‘I want to be the chief strategy officer of my company, not the chief compliance officer.’ Again, just reducing the regulatory burden,” she said. “That’s one of the things I hear most from small business.”
Republican opponent David Perdue has also advocated reduced regulation, energy independence and greater access to investment capital. Even Perdue’s press secretary Megan Whittemore noticed the similarities.
But Whittemore said Nunn didn’t agree with him on environmental rules impacting the cost of electricity and refused to call for repeal one of the biggest regulatory hurdles, the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
“By talking out of both sides of her mouth on specific policies, Michelle Nunn is simply trying to cover up how she will support (President Barack) Obama and (Senate Democratic Leader Harry) Reid’s liberal policies for bigger government, the disaster that is Obamacare, amnesty and open borders,” Whittemore said. “Georgians want a leader in the U.S. Senate who will deliver real results, not someone who will say one thing to get elected and then do another.”
Nunn used her visit to the incubator to renew one of the themes she’s mentioned most often recently, the uncertainty businesses face from the possibility of another government shutdown. She’s used it to hammer Perdue for his support of the most recent one. She argues on the stump that just the threat of a shutdown creates concerns about federal debt instruments critical to providing investment capital.
The Club Entrepreneur incubator is part of an Arizona franchise where members pay as little as $25 monthly for access to office space, training and networking. It is split evenly between start-up businesses and new nonprofit organizations.
Nunn noted that the Points of Light Foundation operated a similar incubator when she was its chief executive. And she reminds voters that growing the foundation from a $3 million budget to a $30 million one is similar to running a business.