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Economy Title: Dear Leader calls Obamanomic confidence pow-wow w/ Gov't Electric CEO/Job Czar Immelt's panel of experts President Barack Obama meets today with almost two dozen current and former company leaders including General Electric Co. (GE) Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt to try and convince the business community as well as voters that the slowing economy doesn’t undercut his policies. It’s not an easy sell. Obama is stopping in two states that are critical to his reelection -- North Carolina and Florida -- and where unemployment rates top the national average of 9.1 percent. With the White House and Congress mired in negotiations to cut government spending and raise the $14.3 trillion federal debt ceiling, Obama has few fiscal options to give the economy a jolt. “The administration has put themselves in a box,” said Gus Faucher, director of macroeconomics at Moody’s Analytics in West Chester, Pennsylvania. “The most important thing for deficit reduction is to get the economy growing again.” Obama convenes today’s session with his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness at the Durham, North Carolina, headquarters of Cree Inc. (CREE), a manufacturer of energy efficient lighting, to again emphasize that the government is relying on businesses to lead the way by investing capital and hiring. While no new policies are being introduced at the meeting, administration officials said Obama will solicit ideas from the panel, which also includes Intel Corp. (INTC) CEO Paul Otellini, and American Express Co. (AXP) Chairman and CEO Kenneth Chenault. “We want to be for any policies that are going to help incentivize and stand up the private sector to drive the recovery,” Austan Goolsbee, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital With Al Hunt.” Obama has spent this year seeking to repair relations with the business community, and the administration is still working to overcome criticism from Republicans and some executives that its regulatory policies are creating uncertainty for the private sector. The Immelt-led board was formed in January to build a bridge to the country’s major employers. The same month he appointed former JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive William Daley as his chief of staff. Last month, the White House proposed revising and trimming regulations to reduce reporting requirements and cut compliance costs. The spate of recent economic data suggesting the recovery is slowing has made the effort all the more urgent for Obama as he begins laying the groundwork for his presidential campaign and an election less than 18 months away. Payrolls grew at the slowest pace in eight months in May, Labor Department figures released June 3 showed, while other data show manufacturing has slowed and the economy is decelerating. Since World War II, no U.S. president has won re-election with a jobless rate above 6 percent with the exception of Ronald Reagan, who faced 7.2 percent unemployment on Election Day in 1984. The meeting with jobs council is one of the ways Obama can help restore confidence so U.S. companies take their $2.6 trillion in capital “off the sidelines,” said Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat. “Relations had gotten really bad between the administration and the business community,” Warner, a former business executive, said. “I think they’re better; they’re not where they should be.” Obama has little room to maneuver in spurring the economy. With Republicans controlling the House, it’s unlikely Congress would pass new fiscal stimulus measures. Reduced taxes and relaxed regulations are the key to restoring growth, not additional government spending, Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, the senior Republican on the Banking Committee, said. “We look back at the stimulus, nearly a trillion dollars gone down the drain,” Shelby said on ABC News’ “This Week” yesterday. “We’ve got to create the conditions of certainty to get people to have confidence to create jobs.” The administration is looking for measures that would appeal to companies and Republicans. Obama said last week he was exploring ways to extend some of the provisions approved as part a deal on taxes last December, including a one-year cut in the payroll tax paid by workers and letting businesses to write off 100 percent of certain capital investments immediately rather than over several years. Obama’s advisers also have discussed a temporary reduction in the employer contribution to payroll taxes, people familiar with the matter said. Jobs Council The members of the jobs council include Brian L. Roberts, chief executive of Comcast Corp. (CMCSA) and board chairman of NBCUniversal; Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook; Robert Wolf, Chairman of UBS Americas; Citigroup Inc. (C) Chairman Richard Parsons; DuPont Co. Chairman and CEO Ellen Kullman; Eastman Kodak Co. (EK) Chairman and CEO Antonio Perez and John Doerr, a senior partner with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Obama’s stop in North Carolina, where the unemployment rate is 9.7 percent, is the first on a two-day trip. Obama won the state by less than 0.4 percentage points in 2008, and Democrats will hold their 2012 convention in Charlotte. Tonight Obama heads to Miami for fundraising. Florida is a crucial swing state in presidential elections and Obama won there by 3 percentage points. The jobless rate there was 10.8 percent in April. Tomorrow, Obama is scheduled to stop in Puerto Rico, making the first official presidential visit to the territory since John F. Kennedy in 1961. To contact the reporter on this story: Julianna Goldman in Washington at Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread |
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