Elderly people make up a surprising number of entrepreneurs. I've written about how some retirees are looking at starting businesses as a fun thing to do with their time. It's also timely because, in an economy where credit is scarcer, retirement savings are one hassle-free resource to tap to get financing. But only if you know what you're doing.

The New York Times today reports on an even riskier phenomenon—people well before retirement age tapping into their 401(k)s (through a complicated but innovative profit-sharing scheme) as a way to finance a start-up.

Tuesday's presidential debate has everyone talking about healthcare reform. But that's an issue that has been on the mind of small-business owners for some time. I just recently interviewed Thomas Sullivan, the outgoing chief counsel for advocacy at the Small Business Administration, for a Q&A that should be up next week. He told me that, during his tenure at the SBA, the one constant has been that the soaring cost of healthcare is the No. 1 problem cited by small-business owners.

One "solution" to rising healthcare costs is to have more things like smoking bans and regulations on fatty foods in an attempt to force people to lead healthier lives. The rub is that when people live longer, new healthcare costs pop up because there's more demand for care in old age.

It's a popular notion recently to say that "Wall Street is dead." It may be true that Wall Street as we once knew it has been irrevocably changed, but let's not jump to Chicken Little conclusions about that like "no one will ever be able to get credit anywhere." As traditional sources of finance dry up, this creates a market opportunity for entrepreneurs to develop new, risky (but innovative) methods for lending and borrowing.

Here's one such new entry. And here's a tidbit from the press release about this new site, Loanio.com:

Borrowers with poor or no credit scores will be permitted to participate on the p2p lending platform by using a Co-Borrower or guarantor. According to CEO and Founder Michael Solomon, "...only around 10% of borrowers on p2p lending sites wind up getting a loan. Many of them have less than stellar credit profiles. With options for these borrowers drying up elsewhere, we believe this feature and others on the website will fill a sorely needed void in the p2p lending arena."

Here are two questions that I would love to see aimed at the presidential candidates when they debate tonight in Nashville.

For Barack Obama:
Senator Obama, you insist that 95 percent of Americans would receive a tax cut under your plan and that only the fabulously wealthy would see a greater tax burden. But your tax “cuts” for lower- and middle-class Americans come in the form of tax credits that expire as a family moves up the income ladder, resulting in, some researchers have shown, significantly higher marginal tax rates for some families. If we really want to encourage people to start businesses, shouldn't we make the tax code simpler and easier to plan around, rather than stuffing in more exemptions that could cause a potential entrepreneur to wonder if boosting his or her income is worth it?

For John McCain:
Senator McCain, you actually sounded like a maverick when you told a crowd in Michigan that lost auto jobs “aren't coming back” and that Michigan workers should develop new skills for a new economy. But, having voiced support for $25 billion in loans for the Detroit auto industry, your actions seem to express the opposite sentiment: that we should hold on to the old economy for dear life. How can Michigan develop a new economy if large, failing companies are receiving a bailout from the government that small entrepreneurs could never hope to receive because they don't have the same political clout?

We won't know for several months whether or not the just-passed bailout plan will help the economy. (And even then, it's more than a bit sketchy to figure out whether it helped or hurt.)

Of course, that won't stop people from making predictions about the effects of the bailout. Put small-business owners in the "decidedly skeptical" category.

A new poll by online payroll service SurePayroll asked small-business owners around the country what they think of the plan, and the result is a 50-50 split.

According to a front page story in Wednesday's New York Times, "some small companies say they are no longer able to get loans from newly cautious banks as credit tightens across the country." There's nothing factually wrong about that statement—SOME small businesses are indeed experiencing that. My problem is just that the article seems to imply that commercial loans are mostly frozen. We know that's not the case.

I don't want to sound like I'm making light of this situation. Access to credit for small businesses is indeed being squeezed, and there's evidence that it could get worse before it gets better.

Remember the so-called 1994 revolution? That was the group of Republicans who in 1994 were swept into control of Congress, with a mission of slashing and burning the size of the federal government. Now, after eight years of a Republican president who spent like a Democrat and with Congress poised to pass what might be the biggest spending bill in history, it's hard to believe that this small-government fervor was only 14 years ago. But a majority of Republicans in Congress voted against the bailout on Monday: Could the small-government wing of the GOP be resurgent?

I recently interviewed Dick Armey, one of the key figures of that era. Although he had come into Congress in 1985, he was House majority leader from 1995 to 2003 and so was one of the dominant politicians along with Newt Gingrich jousting with Bill Clinton over control of the time when "big government [was] over" (in Clinton's words). He is now the chairman of the free-market advocacy group FreedomWorks. I asked him about the political debate over the bailout plan.