After decades of catering to large corporations, Congress is turning its attention to small-business owners -- the backbone of the American economy, a local bank CEO said.

Troy Wilson, chief executive officer of The First National Bank of Sikeston, spoke to Cape Girardeau's business leaders Friday morning at the Chamber of Commerce's First Friday Coffee. He discussed his recent trip to Washington, D.C., as a delegate to the White House Conference on Small Business.

Wilson was appointed to the June conference by U.S. Rep. Bill Emerson. Its purpose was to provide advocacy for small businesses, which Wilson believes bear a disproportionate amount of taxes and paperwork.

The first such conference was conducted in 1980, producing several ideas later enacted by Congress. The second, in 1986, wasn't well attended, but this year it attracted interested business owners from across the United States.

"Congress has discovered or rediscovered small business," Wilson said. "Hopefully, the 1995 conference will have positive results. The climate appears to be very good."

Wilson and his fellow participants ended up with 60 recommendations for the president and Congress. Eleven dealt with taxation, seven with capital formation, seven more with human capital and the rest with procurement, regulation and paperwork.

The recommendations included:

-- Increase small-business loans by reducing the bank regulatory burden and number of banking regulatory agencies.

-- Promote entrepreneur education in U.S. schools.

-- Allow a 100 percent health-care premium deduction.

-- Simplify the language on required paperwork and print forms in English only.

-- Allow fines for violations to be used toward correcting the violations.

-- Limit non-economic damages awarded in lawsuits to $250,000.

-- Abolish the current, complicated system of taxation and replace it with a simple and fair method.

Wilson said a person in the Small Business Administration's advocacy office is supposed to be making sure these and other recommendations made during the conference are considered. The bank president called him a "bureaucrat making sure another bureaucrat takes action."

"I encourage this chamber to require all of its representatives in both houses of Congress to provide a regular report card," he said. "We must hold everybody in Washington accountable."