IBD: What's the single biggest impediment to job growth today?Did he just very politely call Obama an idiot? The videos of the Home Depot CEO from my prior post: Here is one clip where he says that Obama portrays businesses as "Monsters & Villains:"
Marcus: The U.S. government. Having built a small business into a big one, I can tell you that today the impediments that the government imposes are impossible to deal with. Home Depot would never have succeeded if we'd tried to start it today. Every day you see rules and regulations from a group of Washington bureaucrats who know nothing about running a business. And I mean every day. It's become stifling.
If you're a small businessman, the only way to deal with it is to work harder, put in more hours, and let people go. When you consider that something like 70% of the American people work for small businesses, you are talking about a big economic impact.
IBD: President Obama has promised to streamline and eliminate regulations. What's your take?
Marcus: His speeches are wonderful. His output is absolutely, incredibly bad. As he speaks about cutting out regulations, they are now producing thousands of pages of new ones. With just ObamaCare by itself, you have a 2,000 page bill that's probably going end up being 150,000 pages of regulations.
IBD: Washington has been consumed with debt talks. Is this the right focus now?
Marcus: They are all tied together. If we don't lower spending and if we don't deal with paying down the debt, we are going to have to raise taxes. Even brain-dead economists understand that when you raise taxes, you cost jobs.
IBD: If you could sit down with Obama and talk to him about job creation, what would you say?
Marcus: I'm not sure Obama would understand anything that I'd say, because he's never really worked a day outside the political or legal area. He doesn't know how to make a payroll, he doesn't understand the problems businesses face. I would try to explain that the plight of the busi nessman is very reactive to Washington. As Washington piles on regulations and mandates, the impact is tremendous. I don't think he's a bad guy. I just think he has no knowledge of this.
Here's another where he says that the out of touch Obama administration are all tenured w/lifelong insurance:
Probably my second favorite of the 4-segment series is this one where he says that Larry Summers needs to step aside and let him teach "Courage 101" at Harvard:
And my favorite of the bunch, where he pitches a reality TV show: "Timothy Geithner Does Small Business:"
Heh. Just an afterthought here, but is Langone aware of this?: "One nation under God" button gets man fired from Home Depot. More from JammieWearingFool, Pajamas Media, Wake up America, Wizbang, The Daily Caller and Cold Fury