businesses are already reeling from dealing with the affordable care act and proposed increases in the minimum wage. representative scott tipton is a republican from colorado. he s a former small business owner, and a member of the house small business committee, where he chairs the subcommittee on agriculture, energy, and trade. and william dunkelberg is the chief economist for the nfib whose most recent small business optimism index was down significantly. great to see both of you guys. j.j., great to be here. thanks, j.j. how you doing? i m good, thank you. i want to start with you, representative. you were a small business owner, so take off your washington hat for a moment and put your small business hat on for a second. why are you against these rules? you know, this is another example of the president unilaterally stepping in, and we ve had testimony just recently as last monday down in pueblo, colorado. this is creating uncertainty in the marketplace when we ve got to b
but unfortunately, 36% say taxes and bad regulation is their top business problem, even in this bad economy. so they can do it. obviously, those 400,000 workers that were laid off last week weren t laid off at big firms. they were laid off at small firms. they re the ones that grows and creates the jobs. we have to have the economy pick up, give us a reason to hire and we re doll it. william dunkelberg. if there s a story you want us to cove, tweet me at thomasaroberts, we may use it in one of our upcoming segments. headlines topping the news right now. president obama s 2012 campaign office in l.a. was vandalized last night. several windows smashed and police say bebe pellets were found on the ground. the oft was staffed at the time, but nobody was hurt. so far no arrests made. president obama is due to visit l.a. on monday during a campaign
in the minimum wage. representative scott tipton is a republican from colorado. he s a former small business owner, and a member of the house small business committee, where he chairs the subcommittee on agriculture, energy, and trade. and william dunkelberg is the chief economist for the nfib whose most recent small business optimism index was down significantly. great to see both of you guys. j.j., great to be here. thanks, j.j. how you doing? i m good, thank you. i want to start with you, representative. you were a small business owner, so take off your washington hat for a moment and put your small business hat on for a second. why are you against these rules? you know, this is another example of the president unilaterally stepping in, and we ve had testimony just recently as last monday down in pueblo, colorado. this is creating uncertainty in the marketplace when we ve got to be able to have certainty. i m talking small job creators, be on the small business committee or
entrepreneurial community? william dunkelberg is the chief economist for the nfib. brian hamilton is the co-founder and ceo of save work a company that developed software for financial professionals and small businesses. brian hecht is a serial new media entrepreneur and phil town is an investment adviser and best-selling author. great to see all of you. all right, phil, you have been here every year, i think, doing this with us at the end of the year, so i want to start with you, also, because we cited your survey. optimism up three months in a row. in your crystal ball, do you expect this to continue next year? well, i think it will continue. as we look at the basics in the economy, we see that, you know, either we re just getting used to bad news and so we re going to try to ignore it and move forward, or some good things are happening. and i think the latter is the case. so we did see an improvement in the optimism index. and in particular, inside of the index, the ten components