At the DNC, Democrats Unveil a 92-Page Party Platform. What’s in It for You?

Welcome to this week’s Founder Focus! I’m Melissa Angell, Inc.’s policy correspondent, and each week I’ll be dissecting some of the top policy issues small businesses face. You can sign up to get this in your inbox every week here.

As the Democratic National Convention culminates with a primetime speech by Kamala Harris on Thursday, you might be wondering what you’ve missed in the past few days, jam-packed with political programming. For entrepreneurs specifically, the answer is: not that much.

To this point, Harris has begun to lay out fragments of her policy priorities, after officially entering the race with a little over 100 days until the general election. Though tonight’s speech from her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, may not touch heavily on the details — particularly concerning the ticket’s priorities for the nation’s entrepreneurs — a more formal platform just arrived.

Delegates at the DNC on Monday approved the party’s platform for the year, which houses policy priorities in a 92-page document touching on everything from the economy and immigration to inflation and the climate crisis.

There’s about one page devoted to small businesses within the platform. The only new idea teased out is making the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Community Navigator pilot program a permanent fixture. The program, which has $100 million in funding, works with local organizations nationwide to help increase access to federal resources for entrepreneurs.

“In a second Biden term, we’ll make that Navigator program permanent, and include new lenders, new markets, and fairer taxes,” the DNC proposal reads. (Yes, it still erroneously mentions Biden, despite the president’s stepping down from the race a month ago.)

While it remains to be seen to what degree Harris will make her imprint on her party’s platform, her role in its future is set. Even Biden said as much on Monday night: “We made incredible progress, and we have more work to do,” he said. “And Kamala and Tim will continue to take on corporate greed and bring down [the] cost of food.” Whether she’ll use that pulpit to further America’s small business is less certain.