Must Obama take credit for everything? At a Friday afternoon Roanoke, VA rally, President Obama accidentally revealed his true feelings about entrepreneurism by saying, “if you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
Whoa. Did he just say that? When we heard about the quote, we had to hear for ourselves. Check out the video below in which Obama says exactly that.
Transcript: There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own.
Tell that to the small business owners who are sweating it out trying to expand his or her business, or simply keep it afloat. In fact, tell that to the 500,000 small businesses in Colorado.
Just last month, Citibank released a survey that found 23 percent of small business owners have gone without pay for at least a year as they work to keep their businesses afloat in a tough economy. Other findings show the business owners have, at one time or another, taken less profit (78%), worked more hours (70%), used their own money (69%), and gone without a paycheck in order to keep the business running (54%).
When was the last time that one of Obama’s union bosses went without a paycheck? His comments show a fundamental lack of understanding about how small businesses thrive and the sacrifices that small business owners make. Nobody is disputing that our tax dollars pay for infrastructure. But, entrepreneurs take significant risks in order to create new technologies and provide services, and being an entrepreneur is a 24 hour per day, seven day per week job.
With an outlook like President Obama’s, is it any wonder that our economy is sputtering?