Let Me Be Perfectly Clear, and Make No Mistake About This … It’s Amateur Hour In Washington DC

The readers of this publication are logistics professionals who have their hands full running increasingly complex supply chains. Thus, the prevailing attitude could be: “We’re too busy with work to worry about what is happening on the national scene.” But even casual observers have to be concerned by what we have witnessed from our political leaders over the past couple of weeks.  Let me cite two recent examples.

With respect to foreign policy, Vice President Biden goes on national TV and proclaims that Israel, as a sovereign nation, basically can decide to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. The “experts” were surprised by Biden’s comment that “the U.S. would not step in if Israel attacks the nuclear facilities in Iran,” because this would be a major change in the Administration’s policy on the Israel – Iran issue.

The next day, President Obama interrupted his trip to Russia to let everybody know that Vice President Biden had misspoken. The President announced that as far as the United States was concerned, Israel did not have a green light to bomb Iran’s nuclear facility. Understandably, people were, and are, confused about this country’s position on the Israel – Iran issue.

Unfortunately this confusion is not confined to the foreign policy sector. It turns out that there is quite a bit of confusion on the domestic front regarding the condition of the economy.  On the same television program, Vice President Biden acknowledged that they had misread the condition of the economy. Interestingly, the President stated in February that the economic crisis was the most serious since the great Depression, and that unemployment would go higher than 8% if the stimulus bill was not passed. So one could logically question, with unemployment hovering near 10%, whether the issue isn’t “misreading” the economy, as much as failing to understand why the economy is performing so poorly.

Now we learn that perhaps Vice President Biden has once again misspoken. The President in his weekly radio address (delivered July 11^th) assured the nation that his stimulus bill “has worked as intended” – even though his chief economic advisor, Larry Summers, director of the US President’s National Economic Council tells us: “I don’t think the worst is over … It’s very likely that more jobs will be lost.” The President based his comments on the fact that “it (the Stimulus Bill) has already extended unemployment insurance and health insurance, and delivered $43 billion in tax relief to American working families and businesses.” Now most people, or at least the sane ones that have not yet drunk the Obama Kool-Aid, would suggest that a principal attribute of a recovery is an increase in jobs, not the extension of unemployment insurance. But this President and the people in his Administration are not like most people; they love to cite phantom data that cannot be verified (such as jobs saved by the Stimulus Bill). So for our readers, remember what Dorothy said when she finally saw the Wizard in the Emerald City of Oz: We’re not in Kansas anymore! We are in Obamaland where actually creating new jobs is unimportant because everyone can live off of the extension in unemployment benefits.  

If you assume for a moment – and this is a very big assumption – that this administration or the Democratic led Congress and Senate, have even a rudimentary understanding of what drives this economy, then you have to ask why they keep introducing legislation that hurts the creation of jobs? When you introduce Cap and Trade legislation, which portends a significant tax increase for businesses and consumers, businesses start to analyze where they should relocate.  When you continue to pursue card check legislation, businesses start to actively consider alternative production sites.  When you promise to increase taxes and make it more costly to access capital, businesses across the board will ask: “Are there other countries that would welcome us?” When you threaten to overhaul the health-care system and make it more costly for small businesses, entrepreneurs and business owners ask: “Who needs this aggravation?” And the list goes on and on.

As I noted in a previous posting, when you attack the job creators, you can expect fewer jobs – and that is exactly what is happening and why you have unemployment approaching 10%. After six months, the only logical conclusion that one can draw from watching things in Washington D.C. is that this is the most openly hostile, anti-business Administration and Congress in our lifetimes. This country will suffer the impact of this hostility for years to come.

.

As if I needed any further proof of this, it was delivered by a friend who shared his experience as a Board member of one of the most powerful industry associations in this country. After a meeting with a Senator and his staff regarding the potential damage of certain legislation to the profitability of his business, a senior staffer approached him and asked the following question: “Can you tell me how this profitability thing works?” These are the people who are making decisions that will affect the lives of millions of people!

So next time you hear the President give a speech and use his patented “Let me be perfectly clear…” or “Make no mistake, this will…” lines, remember this: Let me be perfectly clear, and make no mistake about it - it’s amateur hour in Washington D.C. and things will not get better until this Administration and Congress stop attacking businesses across the country. 

TranzAct Technologies, Inc.