Issue of the week: Is Obama anti-business?

last updated 8 January 2015

Give Ivan Seidenberg and Jeffrey Immelt credit for saying out loud what many business leaders usually keep to themselves, said Douglas McIntyre in 247WallSt.com. Speaking at a business forum last week in Italy, General Electric CEO Immelt let loose on Barack Obama, declaring that “business did not like the U.S. president and the president did not like business.” Immelt called America a “pathetic exporter,” in part because “the government and entrepreneurs are not in sync.” At a separate event, Seidenberg, CEO of Verizon Communications and chairman of the Business Roundtable, blamed the administration for the anemic job growth and business investment. It’s about time, said Kimberley Strassel in The Wall Street Journal. For too long, business leaders have been trying to work with the Obama administration on issues ranging from ObamaCare to the stimulus package. But they were being played “for a patsy.” Guess what? “It turns out that actively supporting a pro-tax, pro-regulation” administration gets you “more taxes and more regulation.”

Obama cannot ignore the growing animosity of the business community, said Fareed Zakaria in The Washington Post. I know many executives who voted for Obama but who now contend that “he is, at his core, anti-business.” They note that he has no experience in the private sector, has not appointed any corporate executives to his Cabinet, and that “he thinks government and nonprofit work are superior to the private sector.” To be fair, “the economic crisis forced the government to expand its authority in dozens of areas, from finance to automobiles.” But now it’s time for Obama to “outline a growth and competitiveness agenda” that business can get behind. “The populist Left will surely scream that the last thing we need to do is pander to business. But the first thing we need is for these people to start spending their money—soon.”

Sure, but let’s not forget how we got into this mess, said Steven Pearlstein, also in the Post. The complaints about Obama’s record lack “any acknowledgement that the current economic crisis results from the failure of business to wisely allocate capital, protect the interests of investors and consumers, and create a supportive climate for sensible regulation and prudent fiscal policy.” The execs have a lot of nerve blaming Obama for business’ failure to do more hiring, when “the latest data indicate that nonfinancial companies are sitting on record amounts of cash and liquid assets.” Those companies could use that money to hire more workers, but they would rather “increase compensation for top executives” or “mindlessly bid up the price” of financial assets. Now they want us to believe that “what’s good for corporate cash flow is good for America.” How dumb do they think we are?