Today, Aric Newhouse, senior vice president for policy and government relations at the NAM, joined several industry leaders to discuss with the media the negative impacts of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed ozone standards on jobs and economic growth.

Newhouse participated along with Governor John Engler, president of the Business Roundtable (BRT); Jack Gerard, president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute (API); Cal Dooley, president and CEO of the American Chemistry Council (ACC); and Bruce Josten, executive vice president for government affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Aric Newhouse and industry representatives discuss the EPA Ozone Standards

Newhouse explained that manufacturers in the U.S. start each day at an 18 percent disadvantage (excluding labor costs) compared to their competitors outside the U.S. Increasing the cost of manufacturing in the U.S. to comply with burdensome and costly regulations is unacceptable and will only continue to diminish our global competitiveness. Manufacturers are looking for a common-sense, balanced approach to regulatory policy. Unfortunately, these proposed ozone standards do not present such an approach.

He urged the EPA to hold off on current action until the next statutory review is required in 18 months, allowing for an appropriate review with new data and scientific studies on ozone regulations. By moving forward now, the Administration is using stale data gathered prior to 2008 to formulate these proposed ozone standards, ignoring the real-life effects their actions will have on a wide range of industry sectors.

The cost of nonattainment will make it difficult for manufacturers to grow and lead the economic recovery because these new ozone standards are excessive and unrealistic. These standards will affect a broad spectrum of industries and will freeze the economy, preventing future investment, expanded operations and job creation. The President must put the brakes on the EPA and use his authority to stop the Agency from continuing to impose new, irrational ozone regulations.

Additionally, last Friday, NAM President and CEO Jay Timmons, along with several other trade association representatives, met with EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to discuss these proposed new ozone standards. Timmons conveyed the business community’s concern with the new proposal and told the Administrator that these standards would stifle economic growth and job creation.

From President Obama’s remarks at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Monday:

We know what it will take for America to win the future.  We need to out-innovate, we need to out-educate, we need to out-build our competitors.  We need an economy that’s based not on what we consume and borrow from other nations, but what we make and what we sell around the world.  We need to make America the best place on Earth to do business.

Indeed. From the National Association of Manufacturers’ “Manufacturing Strategy for Jobs and a Competitive America“:

We want the United States to be the best place in the world to headquarter a business. The United States should be the best place to innovate and do the bulk of a company’s global research and development. And the United States should be a great place to manufacture for the North American market and to serve as an export platform for the global market.

And, one of the two applause lines in the President’s 35-minute speech:

And I will tell you I will go anywhere anytime to be a booster for American businesses, American workers and American products.

OK. How about Capitol Hill, with a copy of the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement under your arm, asking members of Congress to enact the jobs-creating agreement? Tuck a copy of the U.S.-Panama FTA in the portfolio, too.

Your correspondent, a speechwriter in various stages of his career, was puzzled by the President’s closing remarks in his speech at the Chamber of Commerce this morning:

Yes, we’ll have some disagreements. Yes, we’ll see things differently at times. But we’re all Americans, and that spirit of patriotism and that sense of mutual regard and common obligation, that has carried through far harder times than the ones we’ve just been through. Now I’m reminded toward the end of the 1930s, amidst the Depression, the looming prospect of war, FDR, President Roosevelt, realized he would need to form a new partnership with business, if we were going to become what he would later call the Arsenal of Democracy. As you can imagine, the relationship between the President and business leaders during the course of the Depression had been rocky at times, had grown somewhat fractured by the New Deal, so Roosevelt reached out to businesses, and business leaders answered the call to serve their country. After years of working at cross-purposes, the result was one of the most productive collaborations between public and private sectors in American history. Some, like the head of GM hadn’t previously known the President and if anything had seen him as an adversary. But he gathered his family, and he explained that he was going to head up what would become the War Production Board. And he said to his family, “This country has been good to me, and I want to pay it back.” I want to pay it back.

And in the years that followed, automobile factories converted to making planes and tanks, and corset factories made grenade belts, a toy company made compasses, a pinball machine maker turned out shells. 1941 would see the greatest expansion of manufacturing in the history of America, and not only did this help us win the war, it led to millions of new jobs and helped produce the great American middle class. So we have faced hard times before. We have faced moments of tumult and moments of change, and we know what to do. We know how to succeed. We are Americans and as we have done throughout history, I have every confidence that once again we will rise to this occasion, that we can come together, we can adapt, we can thrive in this changing economy. And need to look no further than the innovative companies in this room. We can harness your potential and the potential of your people across this country, there’s no stopping us.

This is confusing. Is President Obama supposed to be FDR in this analogy? If so, is he hinting he’s abandoning the modern-day equivalents of the National Recovery Administration and Wagner Act unionization for a more cooperative approach toward business akin to WWII industrial policy?

If the President is merely evoking a great national challenge, what challenge is that? President Carter at least explicitly called the energy crisis the moral equivalent of war. Is the President now telling us recovery from the recession is the moral equivalent of war? 

If the message was, “We’re all in this together,” than the President reached too far for the analogy. The moral equivalent of war is war. The economic challenges we face are many and serious, but they are not the existential threat of WWII.

UPDATE (1:30 p.m.): The War Production Board is NOT a good analogy to use when discussing government-business cooperation. From the Oklahoma Historical Society:

During World War II, the War Production Board (WPB) was granted supreme authority to direct procurement of materials and industrial production programs. Established by Executive Order 9024 on January 16, 1942, the WPB replaced the Supply Priorities and Allocation Board as well as the Office of Production Management. The national WPB constituted the chair (Donald M. Nelson, 1942 44; Julius A. Krug, 1944 45) appointed by the president, the secretaries of war, navy, and agriculture, the federal loan administrator, lieutenant general in charge of war department production, administrator of the office of price administration, chair of the board of economic warfare, and special assistant to the president who supervised the defense aid program. The board created advisory, policy-making, and progress-reporting divisions.

Just as long as the President doesn’t ask for them for any input on regulations. That would be outrageous.

The remarks are scheduled for Feb. 7.

• Wall Street Journal, “Obama to Speak at U.S. Chamber”
• The Hill, “Obama to address US Chamber“
• Fox News, “Obama to Speak to Chamber of Commerce Amid Strained Relationship“

The White House and DNC attacks against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for daring to criticize the Administration over policy matters have failed miserably. With no evidence at all — just the bugaboo of “foreign money” – they accused the Chamber of wrongdoing, implying criminal violations and then demanding the Chamber prove itself innocent.

Failing to restrict political speech through passage of the unconstitutional DISCLOSE Act, the partisans turned from legislation to intimidation. That decision harmed public discourse and showed the Obama Administration willing to use the Office of the Presidency for personalized, demagogic attacks.

The Chamber has ably defended itself, and all but the most partisan of media outlets have found the political charges to be overheated, at best. The New York Times cut the White House’s ground of under it in the Oct. 8 report, “Topic of Foreign Money in U.S. Races Hits Hustings“:

The issue of the chamber’s funding first gained notice this week when ThinkProgress, a blog affiliated with the Center for American Progress, an influential liberal advocacy group, posted a lengthy piece with the headline “Exclusive: Foreign-Funded ‘U.S.’ Chamber of Commerce Running Partisan Attack Ads.”

The piece detailed the chamber’s overseas memberships, but it provided no evidence that the money generated overseas had been used in United States campaigns. Still, liberal groups like MoveOn.org pounced on the allegations, resulting in protests at the chamber’s offices, a demand for a federal investigation by Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, and ultimately the remarks by Mr. Obama himself.

White House officials acknowledged Friday that they had no specific evidence to indicate that the chamber had used money from foreign entities to finance political attack ads.

Bob Schieffer, host of CBS’s “Face the Nation,” in a response to White House official David Axelrod’s accusations: “I guess I would put it this way. If– if– if the only charge, three weeks into the election that the Democrats can make is that there’s somehow this may or may not be foreign money coming into the campaign, is that the best you can do?” (continue reading…)

Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions organization conducted “The Real Jobs Summit” in Cincinnati Thursday to counter the White House’s Forum on Jobs Creation and Economic Growth. His group’s jobs platform includes excellent proposals, including many concerning taxes and expanded energy production, policy areas given insufficient attention during the White House program.

Gingrich also writes an op-ed in today’s Washington Examiner, “Crashing the Obama jobs summit,” that cites the views of Paul Taylor, head of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers Association. (We blogged about Taylor’s comments yesterday.) Gingrich:

In an interview with a Pennsylvania newspaper in anticipation of the president’s visit, Taylor delivered a point-by-point repudiation of the White House and the Democratic Congress’ big-government, big-spending, high-taxing plan for the economy.

Taylor expressed the same concerns I heard this week in a series of “Real Jobs Summits” with small-business people and entrepreneurs in Cincinnati, Ohio and Jackson, Miss.: Out-of-control government spending and bureaucratic red tape in the form of Democratic health, cap-and-trade and big-labor legislation are crippling America’s engines of job creation, our small businesses.

Gingrich is a fierce partisan, obviously, and so casts the arguments in a partisan political terms. But yes indeed, the policies — and the uncertainties they represent — are major impediments to jobs creation. (See Irwin Steltzer in today’s Examiner, “Job creation requires certainty, not government action.”)

House Republican Leader John Boehner — a former manufacturer — also made the argument about uncertainty in criticizing the White House event. From CNSNews.com, “Obama’s Snub to Chamber of Commerce in Keeping With ‘Job Killing’ Policies, Boehner Says“:

“I know what it takes to meet a payroll,” Boehner said. “What it means to create jobs. And without certainty, without some confidence about what tomorrow’s going to bring, I’m not going to move.“Look at all of these policies that are being proposed,” Boehner said. “Tax rates that are so uncertain – it’s no surprise to any of us that employers continue to do nothing.”

Yes, tax policy must be a priority in any discussion of jobs and U.S. competitiveness.

The National Association of Manufacturers joined the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, American Trucking Associations and AAA in calling for increased support for surface transportation infrastructure — and immediate action to extend the highway bill. The NAM supports quick enactment of  a short-term extension as promoted by House Transportation Chairman Jim Oberstar, allowing for a full-length, seven year surface transportation authorization in 2010.

The day started with an open letter to Congress and the White House, published as an ad in Washington, D.C. newspapers arguing for greater investment in transportation:

• To reduce traffic congestion thereby enhancing productivity and energy usage;
• To improve road safety and reduce health care costs associated with preventable vehicle crashes;
• To lay the competitive foundation making long-term growth and prosperity possible; and
• To put millions of Americans back to work by helping to sustain an economic recovery.

And what we support, as stated in the ad.

Our organizations believe Congress must address revenue shortfalls in order to finance our nation’s
transportation system at robust levels and we are willing to support revenue approaches, including
increases in federal gasoline and diesel taxes, in order to provide the necessary funding to meet
critical transportation needs. However, because these public policy decisions directly affect our
members, any request that users pay more must be accompanied by legislation that achieves program
reforms, increases accountability, focuses on national objectives, and makes a commitment that
spending will benefit those who make the investment. We must move away from the status quo to
reach these objectives.

Jay Timmons, the NAM’s executive vice president, also participated in telephone news conference at noon today on the topics. Here’s his opening statement.

References to the letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader McConnell by top business trade associations keep turning up in the media, so in the interest of transparency in advocacy, here it is. The date was July 9.

Dear Majority Leader Reid and Republican Leader McConnell:

On behalf of key employer associations, we believe it is critical to provide you with input from the employer community that currently provides health insurance coverage for over 170 million Americans.

The business community has been supportive of reform, as health care costs have continued to rise much faster than the rate of inflation. However, we believe that the process for consideration of reform needs to give the Committees of jurisdiction the appropriate time and process to carefully consider the impact of this legislation.

We strongly urge you to encourage the Senate Finance Committee to continue its discussions on a bipartisan basis to reach consensus on how to improve our health care system and continue to identify ways to expand coverage, without dramatically affecting those who do have coverage. We believe that careful consideration of the issues that affect 17 percent of our economy need to be done within the Committees of jurisdiction. (continue reading…)