James Antle of the Washington Examiner highlights recent concerns from small business owners.

As corporate America’s embrace of social liberalism has complicated its relationship with the Republican Party, small-business owners are hunkering down and readying for “war” as President Joe Biden and a Democratic Congress get ready to enact their agenda.

“Unfortunately, the Biden administration and the Democratic Party have effectively declared war on small business as far we’re concerned,” said Alfredo Ortiz, president of the small-business advocacy group the Job Creators Network.

Climbing out of a hole dug during the pandemic, they argue small businesses cannot afford the costs of new taxes, regulations, mandates, and a minimum wage increase. They say restaurants and other companies with thin profit margins, often disproportionately affected by measures undertaken to slow the spread of the coronavirus, are especially vulnerable.

A survey taken for CNBC after Biden’s election found small-business confidence hit an all-time low. That was before Democrats swept the Georgia runoff elections in January, giving them control of the Senate as soon as Vice President Kamala Harris was sworn in. An Election Day poll found small-business owners favored Republicans by nearly 20 points on the question of which party would better help them recover from the pandemic. …

… Small businesses are seen as a potential counterweight to the shift in corporate partisan allegiances. “They represent Main Street values rather than Wall Street or the Beltway,” said a Republican congressional aide. Ortiz called such businesses “the backbone of America.”

Larger companies, they argue, are better equipped to withstand the tax and regulatory policies likely to follow from a year or two of unified Democratic control of the federal government’s elected branches. Ortiz pointed to Amazon’s support for an increased minimum wage and noted that his group opposed the compromise $11 an hour proposal, down from the $15 an hour preferred by liberals, proposed by Sen. Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican, and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona Democrat.