Talking about McCain’s Economic Plans with Carly Fiorina
On the heels of his economic speech in Pittsburgh Sen. John McCain is in Milwaukee continuing to talk about the economy. Before what the campaign calls a “Economic Summit Meeting” at mining equipment leader Bucyrus International former HP CEO and now RNC Victory Chair Carly Fiorina answered a few of my questions.
Fiorina told me in Illinois yesterday equipment manufacturer and huge exporter Caterpillar warned workers would be laid off if Congress didn’t pass the Colombia Free Trade Agreement. We talked about free trade and the Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Both Sens. Clinton and Obama have taken the Smoot-Hawley approach of advocating protectionism during an economic downturn and oppose the agreement. Fiorina told me McCain’s free trade stance “makes tremendous sense” because “free trade creates jobs at home.”
Yet global competition does cause workers to be displaced. Fiorina talked about one of the more interesting ideas McCain brought up in his speech yesterday: reforming the unemployment system. He calls for putting an employee’s unemployment insurance contribution into a personal account that could move with the worker to provide for living expenses and job training. While the idea sounded new to me Fiorina told me McCain has mentioned this many times before. Only now has the idea broken through.
I mentioned how McCain’s call for an alternative tax system looked a lot like Fred Thompson’s. Fiorina told me the Arizona Senator and Thompson were friends and that McCain was “ready and eager to learn from everyone.” The reason for proposing the alternative tax is to give Congress an incentive to engage in serious tax reform.
Yesterday, I asked for questions on Twitter and people delivered. Leslie Carbone thought that by McCain’s logic on keeping the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts McCain’s plan to have a summer gas tax holiday would amount to a tax hike after Labor Day. Fiorina noted oil hit an all-time high. It’s the number one issue on Americans’ minds. She also noted, “the price of fuel is being passed on to the price of food.” McCain’s gas tax holiday is his way of responding to an issue affecting people right now.
Talk about fuel prices leading to increased food prices dovetailed well with Jay Solo’s concern about the recent phenomenon of turning food into fuel and the global food problem that’s causing. Fiorina pointed out Sen. McCain opposes ethanol subsidies and wants more energy produced from nuclear technology.
Being a former CEO of a Fortune 500 company I had to challenge Fiorina about McCain calling out James Cayne, CEO of Bear Stearns, and Angelo Mozilo, CEO of Countrywide. She answered that McCain goes after “concentrations of power that are no longer accountable.” I would argue that seeing one’s company’s stock plunge, losing a fortune, and getting bought out is the market holding a CEO accountable. On that McCain and I will have to disagree.
UPDATE: I got a call from a Fiorina staffer to clarify something she said about the Columbia trade deal. Fiorina was in Illinois last week discussing the deal with businesses. Caterpillar didn’t specifically state jobs would be lost if Congress didn’t pass the agreement. The general sense in the business community was the deal would encourage exports which would help the job market. Any errors in interpretation were mine. I apologize.
Here’s what Fiorina told Roger Simon last month about free trade:
I, as a business person, I am quite concerned by the protectionist rhetoric that is coming out of the Democratic party. And I think we need to match that rhetoric with the facts about free trade. The facts of free trade and the facts of NAFTA are that NAFTA and free trade create jobs in this country and create opportunity. And we need to continue to put those facts in front of the American people. It is also a fact that trade agreements are an incentive for our allies to work with us. You know, Columbia, for example, is an important ally in the drug war and in the war on terror. And if we cannot get a free trade agreement passed with Columbia, they will be less likely to help us in areas of foreign policy that matter to us.
And finally as well, I think we need to remind the American people that we have always been the strongest economy on earth because we’re innovators, because we’re entrepreneurs, because we’re always moving on to the next thing. And that’s why John McCain is so focused on innovation as an engine of growth. It’s why he would make the R&D tax credit permanent. It’s why he would focus a lot of time and energy on retraining American workers so that when the lower value jobs leave, they’re prepared to take on the new higher value jobs in innovative industries.
I think all of those facts we need to put in front of the American people because we know from experience that if we roll up our borders so no trade comes in, our economy suffers.
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