One of the biggest challenges attached to being a member of the primary legislative body of the world's lone remaining superpower is that you have to be an expert on everything.

That's because Congress passes laws that impact everything.

Yes, everything — from the glaringly obvious, like how much you pay in taxes and who your children are shooting at and getting shot by, to such arcane matters as who gets to investigate the biomolecular structure of mice and even the price of tea in China — Congress dips its fingers into all of it.

What's unfortunate about that is that Congresspeople are, above all else, still only people. They can only know so much and there are only so many hours in the day. That's why they have staff who specialize in specific issue areas. The staffers act as different pieces of their brains that they call on when needed.

But, even then, all these people are still only people. And people are usually only familiar with what they are familiar with, what their experience brings their way.

So, here's the problem: as far as I know, there are very, very few people anywhere in Washington who have ever operated a modern microbusiness. To them, it is foreign, alien, largely unknown and perhaps even unheard-of.

Let's not forget, microbusinesses are not new. There have been little two and five person businesses since forever.

But running a microbusiness in 2005 is a very different animal than it was in 1965.

For starters, the people who are doing it now are not the same set of people who were doing it back then, and that means the things that are important to them are not the same, either.

The technology is very different now, too. That's why it is possible for a nonemployer business to earn in excess of $1 million in annual revenues without the need to hire full-time employees or to be affiliated with a larger company — even if, sadly, the Census Bureau hasn't figured that out yet.

So, when Congresspeople start addressing issues that are going to heavily impact microbusinesses — whether it's reforming the tax code or the credit card industry — they need to go find some microbusiness owner people from outside the Beltway to talk to about it.

Because when you're in a job that requires you to know everything, the only way to get good at it is to recognize those occasions when you don't.