Not surprisingly, most of the data President Barack Obama will see in the SBA's small business economy report released yesterday is grim.

The report said small businesses are less willing to expand, hire new workers or borrow money. Lenders exhibited widening interest rate spreads and tightening terms of lending and business borrowing plunged in the fourth quarter of 2008 to a low annual rate comparable to the levels experienced in the 2001 recession.

Small businesses in most industries, especially in the construction industry hard hit by the housing market downturn, saw declines in employment. Health care costs remain a major concern for small firms with the average annual cost of a family premium for employer-sponsored health insurance increased 119% between 1999 and 2008.