Emanuel Throws Down The Gauntlet

Addressing a conference of CEOs and other business leaders Tuesday night, Barack Obama’s new Chief of Staff Rahn Emanuel challenged business leaders to join the new administration in supporting sweeping changes in health care and public investment on infrastructure.

Lots of things about this article gave me pause for concern, most notably Emanuel’s assertion that business leaders should help find solutions to the middle class squeeze or face revolt. Huh? Business already provides the solution – through employment and/or the provision of goods and services. Smart businesses reinvest profit for expansion, creating new jobs and offering opportunity for advancement for existing employees. Employees are offered a chance to share in this growth through stock purchase and/or investment through 401k plans. Hamstringing business through excessive regulation, taxation, union contracting and shouldering the brunt of health care costs only serve to make them less competitive (see GM).

Like the current administration’s critics who complain the president used the 9/11 terrorist attacks as an excuse to increase the powers of the Executive Office and diminish civil liberties, it appears likely that Obama will use that very same tactic in the guise of the economic crisis to push through systemic changes to health care, taxation and the environment – all to the detriment of business.

Emanuel has set the tone of the relationship between the Obama Administration and Corporate America, and it appears that it will be an acrimonious one. At least he’s being up front about it.