We heard the State of the Union address. There's a lot covered in there.
I'm particularly seeing things that are of import to the business community that
you know so terribly well. But let me start with one that we talk
about a lot of Bloomberg. You can tell whether we should and
that's the debt ceiling. We had the president say we're not going
to follow our debt. That's reassuring.
At the same time. You've been through a couple of years.
Are we going get this thing resolved before we get to the edge of the
precipice? Everybody's keeping their fingers
crossed that it will be resolved. Unfortunately, there is a lot of
brinksmanship involved here that's that's not constructive, but it would be
a devastating blow to the economy for the first time in our history to allow
the debt ceiling to be breached. The members of the Business Roundtable
cared deeply about it because they know what a big blow it would be.
They're not panicked about it because everybody in Washington is telling them,
don't worry, we'll work it out. The nervousness is that nobody at this
point can quite define exactly what the path to working it out is likely to be.
Josh, as you know, one of things the president addressed and got a little bit
of pushback from some people in the chamber was energy policy and worry on
energy policy, getting the oil companies to produce more, saying that they're
holding back. That's my word, not his.
What's the response of business to that? What should be done right now
recognizing, as the president said, we need some oil for a while here?
Yeah, well, the I mean, the business community is united.
We we need to be on the path to transitioning away from fossil fuels.
But we need those fossil fuels not just for a decade, which is what the
president referred to and elicited laughter from the Republican side, not
just for a decade, but for decades to come.
And we need those companies, many of whom are at the forefront of creating
the technologies that will help us transition away from fossil fuel.
We need to have government policies that are not designed to strangle them as
rapidly as possible, but rather to to help give them the capital they need to
make the transition. And that's where the disagreement from
the business community is with a lot of Biden administration policy.
We were strong supporters of many of the climate measures that were contained in
the Inflation Reduction Act, but also strong supporters of the measures in
there and other measures that can be done to make sure that we are taking
advantage of our own resources here in the United States, which can be produced
much more cleanly than almost anywhere else in the world, which we're going to
need to do for not just 10 years, but several decades to come.
One of things we did not hear about is I don't recall the Senate address was any
talk about the overall level of regulation, the extent to which there is
regulation, something that prior administrations such as the trunk
division did to address from the business point of view.
How do we get the right balance both in terms of how much regulation where the
regulation comes? Because I suspect everyone agrees there
has to be some regulation. Yeah, and there's a you won't find a
single member of the Business Roundtable saying, please put me in a completely
unregulated environment. We do need to do.
Government does have a critical role to play in protecting the health and safety
of our population. And there is no resistance from the
business community to that. There is deep concern in many sectors of
the U.S. business community about the tendency of
Biden appointees to overreach. And I'm referring now to some of the
what's called the quasar independent agencies like the FCC and the FTC, both,
in our view, likely overreaching, not just their statutory mandates, but also
what's sensible for the economy. We we need an environment where health
and safety are protected and competition is protected.
But to pursue a lot of social goals through through the guise of that kind
of regulation has really gone overboard in the Biden administration.
And if anything, it may be the biggest point of friction between a lot of our
business leaders and the executive branch.
We have in power today we did hear in the state address talk about taxes, both
the so-called millionaire's tax, but also corporate minimum tax tax on stock
buybacks and referring to those infamous 55 large corporations that pay no tax.
What's the reaction, the business roundtable that is there an issue here
over the fairness, the tax cut? No, it's the short answer.
I mean, they were first with respect to the 55 companies that supposedly paid no
tax. Many of them didn't make profits or were
or were able to use past losses to reduce their profits for the current
year. But the main reason why a lot of
companies ended up on that list is that they have been doing exactly what the
tax code and what the government policy and I should say Biden policy expressly
wants them to do, which is conduct R and D in the United States, invest in
capital plant and equipment and in the United States.
And so they were a they've been able to reduce their tax liability by taking
advantage of the incentives in the tax code to invest in the United States.
We want them to do that and then to demonize them for for having done that
while demanding that they that they stay competitive in the United States is is
just a completely inconsistent and incoherent position.
So, Josh, you've gone through a variety of possible differences of opinion, if I
can put it that way, between the business community and the Biden
restoration. And I guess my question is, is that a
failure to communicate or is a true difference in policy?
And I mean by that you serve in the executive branch.
Are there people in the executive branch who at least understand the arguments
business is making? And I'll name a couple of.
Gina Raimondo has been in business. She did have her own venture company,
Capital for now. Jeff, Science going in, who took a big
company public. Do you have people in the administration
that whether they agree with you or disagree with you, they understand the
arguments they've been there? Yeah, the administration has been short
on those people, but you just mentioned to with whom the business community can
can have a really good hearing and a fair dialogue.
The problem with the Biden demonstration has never been
an unwillingness to listen. The dialogue has been civil.
We've had sharp disagreements on some issues, profound agreements on other
issues. I don't want to characterize the
relationship, at least in my organization, with the Biden
administration as uniformly bad. But we've been often disappointed that
the people with whom we've had our communication with don't have the
background, don't have the business experience to really appreciate what's
likely to make business successful in the United States, which we all agree
ought to be the goal. But I'm optimistic with with folks like
the two you just mentioned, Secretary Raimondo and Jeff Science in positions
of responsibility that we that we will have those good
channels of communication open.