Congress returned to Washington, DC, this month for what will likely be a heated debate on health-care reform. Throughout August, the headlines and town hall meetings were dominated by passionate discussions on how to reform our health-care system.

Given the public outcry last month, my guess is that the health-care debate will slow down this fall, with members of Congress taking a more tempered approach to the legislation. There are already discussions around removing the "public option," which would set up a government system to compete with private insurers. Pushback is also growing on the size, scope and cost of the proposed plan, as well as the tax increases proposed to pay the bill.

But Congress is going to debate more than just health care before the year is over. A number of issues making their way through the House and Senate are important to small-business owners and entrepreneurs.

In the next few months, the U.S. House Small Business Committee will consider a number of issues important to small business, including increased small-business access to capital programs, which the Small Business Administration is working on. At the National Center for Policy Analysis, we have one easy solution--reduce or eliminate the payroll tax so small businesses can keep more of their revenue and send less to the federal government. That will do more to increase capital than any government program.

The committee also expects to hold hearings on health-care reform and its impact on small businesses, as well as hearings on the estate tax. At the NCPA, we have long argued for eliminating the estate tax, given the negative impact it has on many small, family-owned businesses.

An issue almost as big as health care but which hasn't yet gotten the same level of attention is the administration's efforts to reform our financial regulations. A proposal to create a Consumer Finance Protection Agency is moving through the House of Representatives--probably more quickly than anyone would like.

Earlier this summer the president proposed a CFPA that would consist of a single, new agency to set standards for traditional mortgages and restrict or prohibit certain types of mortgages. CFPA examiners would have the authority to go into financial and lending institutions, issue subpoenas, scrutinize their practices, and ultimately demand changes and seek penalties. The CFPA's authority would extend to all financial products offered to consumers. The administration and some in Congress claim we need to consolidate power in one agency to guard against future financial crises like those we have recently experienced.

We can all agree that some reforms need to be made to avoid a recurrence of the mortgage crisis that has squeezed our lending institutions and limited access to credit at a time when many of us need it most.

However, it's difficult to see how a new agency could solve the problem without creating other challenges for all of us who rely on access to capital and the free flow of credit. A new agency would introduce new regulations that could become so burdensome that many safe financial products, which are critical to consumers and business owners, would become unattainable or simply too expensive to offer. If we learned anything from Sarbanes-Oxley, it's that in Congress' rush to fix a problem, it created a new set of regulations that created more challenges than it solved.

Most in the financial industry have expressed concern over the proposed structure of the new agency and are urging Congress to work on an alternative.

As business owners, we need to add our voices to the debate and recommend caution in creating a new agency that will dictate our investments, structure our loans and put at risk the access to capital we all need to keep our businesses going.

From health care to access to capital, what is happening in our nation's capital will have a long-term impact on how we run and manage our businesses.