Getting Down to Business

Former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney hit the campaign trail again on Aug. 8, holding a roundtable discussion with a group of business owners in Concord.

Jobs, globalization, insurance, and government regulations were all discussed at the Greater Concord Chamber of Commerce event that brought together 30 regional business owners to chat with presumed Republican frontrunner.

Romney offered a laundry list of changes he would make to the way government worked in the United States including repealing Obamacare, implementing right-to-work initiatives, negotiating better trade deals, and reforming the corporate tax code.

Tom Raffio, the president and CEO of Northeast Delta Dental, the host of the roundtable, asked what, beyond right-to-work, would Romney do to create jobs. He said it was a shame that he wasn’t able to hire all the people with impressive resumes that are submitted to the company. Raffio also asked what Romney would do for the overall economy.

Romney said he was really there to listen to Raffio’s ideas but he said he would change some things the federal government was doing, including handing over responsibility to Medicare and health insurance to the states like he did in Massachusetts. He said the country needed a sound energy policy that included carbon-based fuel and nuclear, not just solar and windmills. Romney also said the country needed institutions that build human capital.

“I could go on, I could bore you at great length,” he said, “But having spent my life in the business world, I understand what it takes to build an enterprise and have people willing to hire more people. What this president has done has so frightened the private sector, that the very time you want business to be taking more risk and investing and growing, people are pulling back.”

Raffio said he agreed with the education point, calling it important.

Rosemary Heard, the president of CATCH Neighborhood Housing in Concord, stated that while job creation was important, “high-paying jobs” was more important. She said the programs that are encouraging businesses to work with nonprofits. However, the funds don’t come from the state government, they come from the federal government, she said.

Romney agreed with Heard’s point about technology transfer noting that it was very successful in Massachusetts, with MIT. He called it a “goldmine,” however, it wasn’t a federal program but a state program and should be kept that way.

Teresa Rosenberger of Fairpoint Communications said that federal and state regulations have not kept up with the competition and the changes with technology.

“We are finding that we are just strapped with regulations,” she said, “which are costing millions and millions and millions of dollars when we should be building out broadband.”

Rosenberger also complained about the federal stimulus money given to UNH to build a $62 million broadband network where there was already broadband while her company was being forced to make expensive infrastructure investments to bring broadband to the north country, without any assistance.

“From a private business perspective, there is a real issue here,” she said.

Romney was critical of the nearly $800 billion in stimulus that did little to expand investment in private sector jobs. 

Mark Coen, the president of Page Belting who is also an at-large Concord city councilor commented that he was tiring of the divisiveness in Washington. He said the situation was similar to someone getting hired as a CEO and then, having to deal with people in senior management who had been at the job for 30 or 40 years and weren’t working to keep the CEO from getting the job done. Coen said the U.S. Senate and House had their own agendas and were not working together to solve the country’s problems.

“They have their own agenda,” he said. “It’s bizarre … I shouldn’t say I’m frustrated … it’s more like disgust.”

Romney said both Democrats and Republicans love America but Washington was so big and massive that ineffective leaders were able to hang on longer than they should. He said common ground could be found between the parties.

Press conference

Before speaking with business leaders, Romney held a short press conference, just minutes after the opening bell on Wall Street.

Romney offered condolences to the families of soldiers who were shot down from a helicopter in Afghanistan over the weekend.

“Our sorrow is deep,” he said. “The cost of liberty is enormously high and we found that out again, over the weekend.”

On the economic front, Romney commented on the Standard & Poor’s downgrading of the United State’s credit that has helped to rock global financial markets. He called it another example of “a failure of leadership” in Washington, D.C. Romney pointed to his previous business experience and said, one of the first things a company does, is check the balance sheet and America’s “is not right and we should take appropriate action to correct that.”

“The president needs to take the action that will restore our financial footing,” he said.

One reporter asked whether or not the tea party caucus, along with the president, should be blamed for the S&P downgrade.

Romney stated that the president should have worked with both parties to “establish a level of trust” during the last three years that could have resolved some of the political issues facing the country, like shoring up Social Security and Medicare, “in a responsible manner,” while running up debt and unfunded liabilities.

“Instead, he cut Medicare $500 billion,” he said, “and created another entitlement, Obamacare, instead of working to save Medicare and Social Security. He has avoided doing that. The president is the person that leads the nation, that leads Washington, and if it is tough working there, welcome to the real world, that’s what’s happens. It’s tough.”

Another reporter asked if Romney’s political position of cutting spending to fix the economy was just repeating the mistakes of Herbert Hoover.

“You really think so? Do you really?,” Romney asked.

Romney said that back in Hoover’s day, if there were $1.5 trillion in deficits, and deficits as far as the eye can see, into the foreseeable future, “that would have made anyone, in either party, blush.” He said the changes needed to be made to protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, for future generations, and make them sustainable.

“America has to rein in the excessive spending not just this year but over a long period of time,” he said. “We’re spending too much this year, we’re spending next year, and we’re spending too much 10 years from now.”

When asked about globalization and the affect it was having on American workers who can’t compete with the wages companies are paying in China, Brazil, and India. Romney said that there was no way to wall a country off from the rest of the world. He said Soviet Union attempted to do that and when the wall came down, their products were non-competitive and went into distress. If the United States put up walls, huge numbers of jobs would be lost, because the country does export products.

“The right way for a country to compete in a global economy, which we have, and which is not going to disappear, is for us to be so productive and so efficient that we’re able to sell our products around the world,” he said.

Romney stated that China had been running rough-shot over the country for the last decade but no one was willing to do anything about it. He said the United States should only enter into trade agreements that were favorable to America.

Romney said he supported the House’s cut, cap, and balance, and didn’t think he needed to continue to explain his political position on the debt ceiling issue as the drama raged in Washington. He also was asked about a mysterious $1 million donation that was made to his political action committee by a business that later, closed shop. He said there was “no controversy” to the issue because the person who made the donation, Edward Conrad, a former business associate, had recently come forward to reveal that he was the person who made the donation.

Democrats respond

After Romney’s roundtable, Ray Buckley, the chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, was outside waiting to talk to reporters about Romney’s radical tea party agenda.

Buckley said in order to improve the economy, the country should invest more money in education and a G.I. Bill that assisted in raising the standard of living for the middle class in the 1950s and 1960s. 

It’s a long-term solution,” he said. “The foundation in a long-term success in trade is education. We’re not going to be able to compete against those countries that are passing us, by the day, on the level of education. We’re not going to be able to complete if the tea party agenda is accepted."

The Democrats planned on holding three counter-press conferences outside of Romney’s events on Monday, with various political speakers offering opposing views.