REPS LISA MCCLAIN, JULIE FEDORCHAK And PATRICE ONWUKA: Women Know The Value Of Tax Cuts To Our Economy

Small businesses generate employment, innovation, and economic prosperity everywhere. They drive economic growth while allowing Americans, especially women, to pursue their dreams and build fulfilling, rewarding, and prosperous lives.

As women who have owned and worked for small businesses, we can attest that America’s economic engine is our 35 million small businesses, of which about one-third are owned by women. In fact, 99.9 percent of all U.S. companies are considered small businesses.

As we wrap up National Small Business Week, celebrated May 4th through 10th, we are reminded of the impact of entrepreneursand the threats to their livelihoods if the Trump tax cuts expire.

North Dakota has 75,265 small businesses, representing 98.8 percent of the state’s businesses and employing over half of the workforce. And in Michigan, 911,914 small businesses account for 99.6 percent of businesses and employ 1.9 million workers.

Of the millions of small businesses in the country, women-owned small businesses are thriving. The nation’s 12 million female-owned businesses generate $2.1 trillion for the U.S. economy. Women-owned businesses employ 11 million workers across the nation. In both of our states, women-owned businesses outpace the national average of 40 percent. Between 2019 and 2023, female businesses grew 14 percent, adding 1.4 million jobs. This doubles the growth rate of male-owned small businesses.

What’s helped fuel that growth? The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), passed in 2017, gave small businesses the breathing room to reinvest, expand, and hire. It slashed tax rates for families and job creators, ushered in the lowest unemployment in 50 years, and drove median household income to a record high of $68,703 by 2019. Within two years of its passage, U.S. businesses added 4.7 million jobs, and thousands offered bonuses and benefits to their employees.