Small Business-owners Meet Senators, White House & Deliver a Message: Small Businesses Need Real Health Reform
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WISPIRG
Landscapers, chocolate-makers, home inspectors, and the owners of nail salons, cafes, bookstores, fishing boats, shoe stores and funeral parlors took a day off from running their businesses to make sure their voices are heard in a health care debate which is often mostly dominated by politicians and lobbyists for the health care industries.
Three of those businesspeople made the trip from Wisconsin. Coming from Eau Claire were Terri Stanley and John Hibbard of Hibbard Law Offices, and Penny Fassler, owner of Vision of Light Stained Glass in downtown La Crosse.
Including Stanley, Hibbard and Fassler from Wisconsin, small business owners from 24 states joined Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension (HELP) Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Chair of the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, for a morning press conference on Capitol Hill.
At midday, the businesspeople attended a White House briefing on health care by Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Karen Mills, Administrator of the Small Business Administration.
The entrepreneurs also met with many of their Congressional representatives.
The states from which businesspeople came include:
Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin
The four main sponsors of the unprecedented effort are Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group, Main Street Alliance, Small Business Majority, and Consumers Union.
