GOP Senator George Voinovich To Back Obama’s Small Business Incentives

by Stuart Shapiro

Ohio Senator George Voinovich announced yesterday that he is breaking ranks with the Republican Party to support a Republican-type bill (yes, life in Washington is bizarre) that would make it easier for small businesses to get access to credit as well as give them some tax breaks.

Retiring Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) said he plans to help push a package of small-business incentives through the Senate next week, a move that would give President Obama and congressional Democrats a key victory on the economy in the final weeks before the November midterm elections.

Voinovich is a lame duck who will leave office in January.  It’s odd how not having to run for reelection has freed him to act according to the public interest.  That’s not how the textbooks on democracy teach it.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.