Being a small business owner isn’t easy- Just ask George McGovern

In 1988 George McGovern, former democratic Senator and 1972 presidential nominee, was out of the politics business and decided, somewhat haphazardly, to become a hotelier. He bought the leasehold on Connecticut’s Stratford Inn having no experience in running a hotel, or any small business for that matter. Unfortunately for McGovern it didn’t take him long to realize that the system he’d helped create was about to eat him alive.

In 1972 McGovern seemed to think government intervention was the solution to most anything. The American public didn’t buy it and between 1988 and 1991 George McGovern got first hand experience with government intervention from the other side of the table, the small business owner’s side. An article in the LA Times in the spring of 1990 caught up with McGovern and his new endeavor. McGovern, having now experienced the ups and downs of small business life claimed,

I wish I’d done this before I’d run for President. It would have given me insight into the anxiety any independent businessman or farmer must have…Now I’ve had to meet a payroll every week. I’ve got to pay the bank every month…I’ve got to pay the state of Connecticut taxes…It give you a whole new perspective on what other people worry about.

In 1991, unable to find financing, McGovern had to close the doors of the Stratford Inn. After running the small-business gauntlet, and essentially failing, McGovern wrote a few articles relating his experiences and to the surprise of many declaring the U.S. government’s "intervention" he had previously touted was a serious pitfall to the U.S. economy. He wrote that "legislators and government regulators must more carefully consider the economic and management burdens we have been imposing on U.S. businesses" citing his own difficulties with fire protection standards and endless tax forms. McGovern was convinced that health and well-being, a clean environment and economic justice could still be attained without the incessant paperwork, complicated tax forms, the numerous regulations, and seemingly endless reporting requirements knowing that many small businesses could not pass these costs on to consumers and be competitive or profitable. He was right.