NYT: Who Is the Small Business Majority?

By Robb Mandelbaum

The Small Business Majority released a series of state polls today and yesterday that make an astonishing claim: small-business owners, by wide majorities, support a mandate that would require that businesses either provide health insurance for their employees or pay a tax to fund government-supported insurance for them. In Iowa, 65 percent support the pay-or-play proposal; in Nebraska, 59 percent favor it. Across 16 states, support for the employer mandate ranges from 59 percent to 72 percent

As far as the Agenda knows, the Small Business Majority research is the only research that has found that small businesses buy in to pay-or-play. All of the other small-business advocates claim the opposite, and by greater margins — even the National Small Business Association, whose moderate leanings seem practically radical, at least compared to those of its larger rivals, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business. (more)