To the editor;

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has been honored with the Special Congressional Appreciation Award by the Small Business Council of America. The SBCA cited his dedication to small business and support for America’s private enterprise system as reasons for the honor. How they arrived at this absurd decision is the question that should haunt small businessmen and each and every citizen.

Grassley voted, in 2008, to take $700 billion from small businesses and their customers to give to big banks through Bush’s Troubled Asset Relief Program. By the way, I talked to Grassley’s staff on the phone four times asking only to let me know if he read the bill, with no response. Grassley has also supported spending $1 trillion dollars to fight a war on terror that does more to recruit moderate Muslims to extremism and take away our freedom than make us safe.

That money was taken out of the productive free enterprise system he supposedly supports.

I recently heard him on public radio bragging about his vote for the financial reform bill. He claimed the bill had more stringent oversight of the Fed. But the bill contained no provision for a Fed audit, leaving it a secret operation and our money subject to the whims of manipulation by special interests, both foreign and domestic.

His support for biofuel standards also makes everything more expensive for consumers, further hurting small business. If he demanded no subsidies for Big Oil at the same time, making biofuels more competitive, that would be positive. But having any energy sources subsidized is damaging to small businesses because it distorts markets, creating an atmosphere of uncertainty for consumers and business owners.

A free enterprise system would direct scarce resources to its most efficient uses.

The well-intentioned Grassley has actually hurt small business. The question remains, how could he receive an award for doing the opposite?

My guess is that in the society we live in, government schools breed an adoration and dependence on government like a child has for his mother. For 12 years we move when the bell rings. We go through each day with our every move designed to please our government masters.

People like Grassley, and apparently the SBCA, think individual citizens are incapable of managing their own lives, and, if allowed to do so, the country would fall into a state of chaos where there would be no food, shelter, fuel and so on. (These things have all been provided by individual initiative, not government orders.)

Central planning continually proves itself to be a failure. TARP, the war on terror, biofuels and money management by the Fed, have all contributed to our continuing stagnant economy.

Small business, left unencumbered by Washington busybodies, would have left us a wealthier nation.

The one who should have received the award is either nobody or everybody. But no individual can be responsible for a thriving small business community unless that individual can somehow thwart the illogical direction of government control.