Pillow talk?
Via Beltway Confidential:
Jeffrey Immelt, President Obama’s jobs czar and CEO of General Electric, told Fareed Zakaria that he has learned, as jobs czar, to appreciate how regulations prove more of a burden for small business owners than for large companies and said that the federal government should undertake “some simplification of regulations in the United States.”. . .
Immelt did not explain why small business face more difficulty with the government than bigger businesses, but he might have noted that the $50 million is barely more valuable than the lobbying portion of GE’s budget. OpenSecrets.org compiled statistics that show GE spent over $39 million on lobbyists in 2010, and then followed that — investment, let’s call it — with an additional $15 million and counting spent on lobbyists thus far in 2011.
With that in mind, Immelt’s praise for Obama — “He’s a good listener [and] he’s tough-minded” — seems understandable. Indeed, the president is probably the best listener $39 million can buy.