Lead story in the WSJ today is that 80 CEOs (click for listhave banded together to nudge Congress towards bipartisan deficit reduction … i.e. get the fiscal cliff resolved.
The group – calling themselves Fix the Debt – issued a public statement.
Here are snippets from the Journal’s recap:
Any fiscal plan “that can succeed both financially and politically” has to limit the growth of health-care spending, make Social Security solvent and “include comprehensive and pro-growth tax reform, which broadens the base, lowers rates, raises revenues and reduces the deficit.”
“You can’t tax your way to fix this problem, and you can’t cut entitlements enough to fix this problem.”
The executives didn’t endorse Mr. Obama’s proposal to raise the marginal income-tax rates for the top 2% of taxpayers or any other proposal.
Rather, they called for an overhaul of the tax code that, among things, would eliminate or reduce deductions, credits and loopholes (known as “broadening the base”), and one that also would bring the Treasury more revenue than the existing code does.
Notably absent from the Fix the Debt list are CEOs from big U.S. energy companies, some of whom fear that tax increases will fall more heavily on them.
Hard-line foes of tax increases aren’t likely to be moved by the CEOs.
“When bipartisan deals are struck promising to cut spending and raise taxes, the spending cuts don’t materialize but the tax hikes do,”
Raises a couple of questions:
1. Where have these jabrones been?
2. Only 80 CEOs? Where are the rest?
3. Is a public statement rehashing the obvious the best they could do?
C’mon guys, mobilize for the good of the country.
The Homa Files 
October 25, 2012 at 7:48 am |
Yeah, guys…and you could start investing some of that three trillion in cash you’re sitting on in America…