Six chambers of commerce in Oklahoma, including the State Chamber, joined 300 business groups from across the nation in sending a letter to Congress asking it to reconsider passage of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Act.
“As we recover from the economic shock of the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses across the nation face significant headwinds, including a worker shortage crisis, massive supply chain disruptions, and the highest inflation in more than a generation,” the letter states. “We need Congress focused on helping address these problems.”
The Build Back Better bill would add to the challenges for businesses due to taxes, the business groups wrote.
“The Build Back Better Act would hurt Oklahoma’s small businesses by saddling them with significant tax increases, inflexible mandates, and unaffordable penalties,” Jerrod Shouse, Oklahoma state director of National Federation of Independent Business, told The Center Square. “Our members are facing a host of challenges right now, including the inflation tax, supply chain disruptions, worker shortages, and COVID-19 variants and restrictions. The burdens imposed by the Build Back Better Act would punish Main Street businesses and undermine their economic recovery.”
Oklahoma State Chamber of Commerce CEO Chad Warmington said certain aspects of the bill will be more harmful than helpful to already-struggling businesses.
“If you tack on inflationary things that make it more expensive for the business to do business, and then you raise their taxes, which obviously limits the amount of revenue that they’re generating, all of that is really negative for employers and for their communities,” Warmington told KOKH.
The White House website states in a release, “This framework will set the United States on course to meet its climate goals, create millions of good-paying jobs, enable more Americans to join and remain in the labor force, and grow our economy from the bottom up and the middle out.”
After narrowly passing the U.S. House, the is in the evenly divided Senate, where it faces an uncertain future.
This article was originally posted on Oklahoma business groups not on board with Build Back Better Act
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