Friday, February 11, 2011

Obama

Altruism is Obama’s new jobs plan

NOLAN FINLEY

America has elected few presidents who've had significant and successful business careers before entering the Oval Office. So the absence of any private sector executive experience on Barack Obama's resume doesn't set him that far apart from his predecessors.

But his aloofness to how business works sure does.

Speaking this week to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the president assured the nation's business leaders that he "gets it," that he understands the pressure cooker they've lived in during this deep recession and snail's pace recovery.

And then he made a strange plea for a guy who "gets it." He asked them to stop knocking themselves out to keep their enterprises afloat and just go out and hire someone.

Having failed to restart America's job engine by saturating it in $800 billion of stimulus starter fluid, Obama is now appealing to altruism.

Invoking JFK, the president urged executives to "ask yourself what you can do for America." His ask: Take the $2 trillion sitting on their sidelines and add workers to their payrolls.

The response was described as polite, which is a nice way of saying they thought him clueless.

The businesspeople know what they've done for America — they've employed every bit of wizardry they could conjure to keep their doors open in an economy ruined in large part by poor policymaking by politicians. They've suffered through the excruciating decisions to cut workers and close offices and plants. They've spent sleepless nights weighing one desperate option after another to buy themselves a little more time.

They've seen their profits disappear and their operations dwindle. And now they've got a president asking them to go reckless, to add employees they don't yet need on the faith that Obama really does get it and will put policies in place to get the economy moving.

You don't need an MBA to know business doesn't work that way. Companies that add workers ahead of demand are soon out of business.

And investors don't invest in an economy still vulnerable to the whims of a president who can't tell pro-business policies from anti-business ones.

Turn the tables and let the Chamber members ask Obama the same question — what can you do for America? — and you might get somewhere.

For one thing, Obama could reverse policies that are choking off domestic oil production and contributing to rising energy costs. The nervousness about oil prices is detrimental to investment.

He could admit that Obamacare was rushed through without regard to the higher costs for employers. When the government makes every employee added to the payroll more expensive, the result is fewer hires.

The president could also stop stubbornly defending his financial regulations and listen to complaints that they make it all but impossible for banks to lend to small businesses.

He could roll back spending to calm fears that exploding deficits will send the economy tumbling again.

And he could get over his obsession with raising taxes on high-income earners to provide craved-for certainty in the tax code.

But instead, he reveals he doesn't get it at all by assuming businessmen can do what politicians do — spend money they don't have on things they don't need without worrying about paying the bill.

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