Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Tim Kaine on Tuesday rolled out running mate Hillary Clinton’s set of proposals to boost small businesses after touring a Lakewood aerospace manufacturer.

The Virginia senator also took some swings at Republican rival Donald Trump, criticizing what he called the billionaire real estate developer’s “track record of, frankly, stiffing small businesses” on the way to accumulating his fortune.

“If you want there to be more jobs, if you want there to be higher wages, if you want there to be innovation and entrepreneurship, it’s the small businesses and startups that are going to make that happen,” said Kaine, kicking off an hour-long discussion at Primus Aerospace in a Lakewood business park.

U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter and half a dozen small business owners, including Randy Brodsky, CEO and president of Primus, joined Kaine to talk about the Democrats’ proposals and air suggestions about overcoming roadblocks to finding qualified employees and access to financing, among other beefs.

The five-point plan – announced earlier in the day by Clinton – includes making it easier for entrepreneurs to navigate regulations when starting businesses, encouraging lending institutions to provide financing for small businesses, creating a streamlined alternative for businesses filing their tax returns to ease accounting burdens, easing access to tax credits when small businesses provide health care to employees and improving communications between government and small businesses.

“Being able to start and having a culture where startups are not complicated but easier is really important,” said Kaine. He recalled helping create what he termed a “one-stop shop for small business” when he was governor of Virginia.

“We need to work on the same kind of streamlining at the federal level,” he said, adding that the feds could conceivably help state and local governments make up revenue shortfalls if they do away with some fees charged to businesses.

Pitching the proposal to simplify tax preparation for small businesses – “Now, nobody loves taxes, but it’s what patriotic and responsible people do, because if we love teachers and we love police and if we love firefighters and we support our troops and we support the VA, then there’s got to be a tax system, of course,” he said to smiles – Kaine compared it to the standard deduction available to individual taxpayers.

“If you’re going to try to file and you’re a very small business, the record keeping that’s necessary to comply with the current corporate income tax setup is pretty intense,” he said. “If you’re under a certain threshold on the income side, why not make it easier and use that same kind of threshold or that same kind of concept that we use in individual income tax?”

Those around the table – assembled atop massive wooden boxes, flanked by displays of some of the precision machined components Primus manufactures for airlines and defense contractors – nodded in agreement.

Kaine also laid into Trump, saying, “We’re facing a guy who has not been a friend of small businesses” before launching into a withering attack on the real estate developer’s business practices.

According to Kaine, Trump “has perfected the strategy” of hiring contractors of all sorts and then refusing to pay what had been negotiated, confident the small businesses can’t afford expensive attorneys to enforce their contracts.

“So he will say, ‘Yeah, you’ve got a contract. Sue me if you want, but we’ll wear you down in court,'” Kaine said, shaking his head as the audience scowled.

It was Kaine’s first visit to Colorado as the vice presidential nominee. His GOP counterpart, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, held two public events in Denver and Colorado Springs earlier this month. Since becoming their parties’ nominees in July, Clinton has appeared at a rally in Commerce City and Trump spoke at a Denver rally and one in Colorado Springs. Both have also scheduled fundraisers in the Aspen area, including a Trump fundraiser set in the mountain town on Thursday.

At the Kaine event Tuesday, Bennet said his travels around the state remind him about the importance of making it easier for small businesses to create jobs

“What I hear from people, even though we’ve got the fourth lowest unemployment rate in the country, is that people are still challenged because they’re making the same thing they were making 10 years ago in terms of salary, but their cost of housing and health care, of college, of early childhood education, is making it so they can’t save,” Bennet said. “And those jobs that are going to pay good wages and where you can count on economic growth creating job growth and wage growth are small businesses.”

A spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee scoffed at the Clinton-Kaine proposals, maintaining that the approach won’t produce more robust growth than has taken place under the Obama administration.

“Tim Kaine came to pay lip service to Colorado small businesses,” said Ali Pardo in a statement, “but the Clinton campaign can’t escape the facts: under Democrat leadership we have seen stagnant business creation, new taxes, and $746 billion dollars worth of new regulations on small businesses. Coloradans are ready for a new direction.”

Colorado Republican Party Chairman Steve House was equally unimpressed with Kaine’s visit.

“A Clinton-Kaine administration would mean more of the same top-down approach to running our economy that has utterly failed to provide more opportunity for poor Coloradans,” House said in a statement issued prior to Kaine’s arrival. “Considering our governor doesn’t seem to have an answer on why the Hickenlooper and Obama administrations have produced stagnant wage growth, perhaps Kaine can enlighten us.”

State Rep. Janet Buckner, D-Aurora, however, was thrilled after having the chance to meet Kaine prior to the roundtable.

“Tim Kaine was so impressive. He was so personable,” said Buckner, wearing a grin ear-to-ear. “I am so excited, because part of my platform is investing in jobs. Small businesses have such a huge priority in my house district in Aurora.”

Other Democratic luminaries joining Buckner as part of the invited audience included former Lt. Gov. Joe Garcia, state Sen. Andy Kerr and state Reps. Max Tyler, Brittany Pettersen, Jessie Danielson, Angela Williams and Rhonda Fields. Candidates in the crowd included Chris Kennedy, who is seeking term-limited Tyler’s seat – the Primus facility is in their district – and Leslie Herod, the Democratic nominee in Denver’s House District 8.

“It’s great to be back in Lakewood,” Kaine said at the outset of the roundtable discussion, recalling visits to family in the Denver suburb nearly every summer while he was growing up in Kansas City, including going to Denver Bears games when the minor league team played at Mile High Stadium.

– ernest@coloradostatesman.com