Archive for the ‘Laws’ Category
Bain Capital
Sep28
By John Feehery
I was talking to a Democratic friend of mine this morning, and he told me to expect the President’s people to go after Mitt Romney on the jobs issue. “There is a lot more that hasn’t come to the surface,” he told me confidently.
I’m sure there is. There is always more on just about everybody. I wish we knew more about Obama before the American people elected him three years ago.
The issue that my friend talked to me about had to do with Romney’s time at Bain Capital.
Bain Capital is a private equity firm that buys undervalued companies and turns them around so they can become profitable. They have had a lot of success. You can wake up with a Bain Capital company (Sealy), check out the weather (they own the Weather Channel), get a cup of coffee and a donut (Dunkin Donuts), go to the store and buy some running shoes to work off the donut (Sports Authority), buy some office supplies (Staples), grab a burger (Burger King), buy a present (Brookstone), catch a movie (AMC Entertainment), and then get home in time for dinner (Domino’s Pizza).
The criticism will come from the Democrats that Bain Capital fired a bunch of people in the process of turning some of these companies around, and of course, that is true. But the fact of the matter is you have to fire some people to make a struggling company profitable. And the fact of the matter is that these companies now employ hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, many of who are entry level or at the lower end of the working spectrum.
The question today is not what Romney did when he was at Bain Capitol. He had some winners and some losers, but he knows more than a few things about creating successful companies in the private. The question is what did he learn about bringing efficiencies to the private sector that he can bring to the public sector?
And this is the question that Democrats don’t want to be asked, because they have a vested interest in keeping government inefficient. They are largely funded by public employee unions, and they have absolutely no interest in electing anyone who wants to fire incompetent workers.
And that is Romney’s top challenge, to make the case that he can make government more efficient and more effective by firing thousands of people who are wasting the taxpayer’s money on a daily basis.
He has to make the case that this just isn’t about jobs. It is also about trust. And right now, people don’t trust the government to do the right thing, to make the right choices, to spend the people’s money wisely and to be a promoter of liberty and not a threat to it.
To say that the bureaucracy is over-bloated is to state the obvious. To say that government is over-grown is to give a nod to reality. But to make the case that trimming back the government will lead to private sector growth and more jobs for everyone is a bit of a challenge, no matter how true it might be.
But that is the case that Mr. Romney must make if he is to win the battle against the Democrats as they claim that he is a job-killer. He has to make the case that smaller and smarter government means a bigger and more prosperous private sector.
If he can’t make that case, he will struggle against Mr. Obama just as he struggled in his race against Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts. If he does make that case, he will be our next President.
Ping-Pong
Sep26
By John Feehery
Ping-Pong is a wonderful game, requiring skill, finesse, great hand-eye coordination, and at times, power.
Ping-Pong is a different game in the Congressional sense.
When one legislative body ping-pongs back a piece of legislation to another legislative body (like the House jamming the Senate) it can be both exhilarating and frustrating at the same time.
Last week, the House served up a continuing resolution plus some additional disaster assistance money to the Senate before leaving for its break for the Jewish holidays.
The Senate, which hoped to also break for the week, is not at all happy with what the House served up.
But to be successful in jamming back the House, the Senate has to act as one. The rules of the Senate make it awfully hard for that body to act quickly on anything if there is a disagreement between the political parties.
And on this package, there is intense disagreement.
The Republicans want to pay for disaster assistance. The Democrats don’t like how the Republicans paid for it, especially their efforts to isolate a particularly bad political scandal that is currently afflicting the Obama Administration.
But in trying to avoid political embarrassment for the White House, the Senate Majority Leader might actually be putting his own vulnerable members in danger.
And you have to ask yourself this question if you are a Democrat up for re-election in a red-tinged state: What has this President done for me lately?
The interesting dynamic here is that both Senate Majority Leader Reid and Senate Minority Leader McConnell have been coordinating with their House colleagues in such a way as to weaken their own legislative body’s power at the negotiating table.
Reid apparently negotiated with House Speaker John Boehner on the initial CR package, and then went over to the House side to help Speaker Nancy Pelosi round up the votes to kill the package he negotiated.
McConnell, in turn helped to craft the Boehner strategy to jam the Senate and force Senator Reid’s hand.
The rule to be learned here is that when the Senate is divided amongst itself, the House has a great opportunity to jam the Senate.
As a former House guy, nothing gives me greater pleasure than seeing the lower chamber sticking it to the upper chamber.
My prediction? The Senate caves and they pass the House bill to keep the government funded.
