Anyone watching the Washington budget debate over the past decade must have wondered why there didn’t seem to be any grown-ups in the room — someone who could cut through what Honeywell’s Dave Cote calls the “hysteria, histrionics and hyperbole” and force the bickering children to agree on a reasonable compromise.
That’s what the voters want, what the economy demands and what country must now have to regain its confidence and its global influence.
Some grown-ups who have been noticeably absent from this conversation have been the heads of the country’s major corporations, who talk a good game about deficit reduction but haven’t invested the time, money and political capital necessary to jolt the political system from its dysfunctional equilibrium.
That’s about to change. Last week, the first battalion of CEOs showed up in Washington, reporting for duty.
It all started last year when corporate executives looked on in horror as the ideological tong war in Washington nearly led the country to default on its debt. As the crisis was developing, they assumed it was just the kind of posturing that characterizes any high-stakes negotiation.
By the time they realized it wasn’t innocuous brinksmanship and began to engage, it was too late.
Although default was narrowly avoided, the damage to the markets and the economy was real. And subsequent events — the breakdown of the Obama-Boehner talks on a grand bargain, the failure of the congressional super-committee — have convinced a number of CEOs that they had to get involved, particularly with a fiscal cliff looming in January.
During the past year, there have been quiet meetings put together by chief executives such as Cote, Aetna’s Mark Bertolini and JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon, and Senators Mark Warner (D) and Saxby Chambliss (R), the ringleaders of the bipartisan Gang of Six. Nudging it along and pulling it all together has been Maya MacGuineas, who for a decade has been sounding the deficit alarm from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
Last week, the group, calling itself Fix the Debt, went public at a news conference urging the president and Congress to embrace a deficit-reduction plan along the lines suggested by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles Commission, which included reforms of a tax code that produces too little and entitlement programs that spend too much.
“Think of it as Simpson-Bowles 3.0,” said former Republican senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, who is co-chairman of the effort along with Ed Rendell, the former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania.
In addition to Cote, Dimon and Bertolini, the charter business members include Sandy Cutler of Eaton, Gregg Sherrill of Tenneco, Marty Flanagan of Invesco, Gary Loveman of Caesars, Thomas Quinlan of R.R. Donnelley & Sons and financiers Steven Rattner and Pete Peterson.
Later that evening, at Honeywell’s Washington office, over a salmon dinner with the floodlit Capitol dome as a backdrop, the executives huddled with their political co-conspirators: Simpson and Bowles, Warner and Saxby, and Rep. Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 Democrat in the House. Also on board: Simpson-Bowles commissioners Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, and Andy Stern, former president of the Service Employees International Union.
The Post Most: BusinessMost-viewed stories, videos and galleries int he past two hours
Watchlist
World Markets from
Other Market Data from
Key Rates from
Loading...
Comments