03 October, 2013

‘Shame on us’: How businesses brought the debt limit mess onto themselves

‘Shame on us’: How businesses brought the debt limit mess onto themselves:
Look, I had the chairman of the Energy and Commerce committee, Fred Upton, tell me that he got into an argument with one of these young guys on his committee about the defunding of Affordable Care Act. Well the argument was 'look, Energy and Commerce had 50 hearings on that bill. Like it or not, it passed. The president signed it. The Supreme Court upheld it. So you don't get to pick a bill you don't like and link it to the entire financial well being of the United States.' Well the response is, 'I didn't come here to govern.' Well what did you come here for? What did you come here for? To burn it to the ground?

So when you talk about getting back to the fife and drum and getting back to American roots, are you kidding me? This is so antithetical to everything that America has been about.

So there's a sense in the business community that this is just appalling. You don't get to default on the United States. I've got 70 offices in 26 countries. I've got CEOs and government leaders around the world who take me aside privately and say 'what on earth are you doing over there? If you can't get this right, how the hell are we going to get this right?'

And all this stuff about China and India and Brazil? Baloney. We are still 24 percent of the world's GDP and we are the flywheel that drives all those other economies. And we are out to lunch.