Obama's olive branch to Big Business.

In recent weeks, President
Obama has taken significant
steps to try to repair his
administration's frayed
relationship with the business
community.
He has renegotiated a free-
trade treaty with South Korea
and signalled that he intends
to fight for its acceptance in
Congress. Similar pacts with
Panama and Colombia may
not be far behind.
The White House has thrown
its support behind a reform of
the corporate tax code that
could lower rates in exchange
for elimination of tax
preferences. And the recently
passed tax deal with
Republicans in Congress also
extended, or included for the
first time, a number of tax
credits and deductions that
were high on the business
wish-list.
The new White House Chief of
Staff, Bill Daley, has strong
personal and professional ties
to business - so much so that
the appointment even got
rave reviews from Tom
Donohue, the pugnaciously
partisan and ideological
president of the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce.
At the National Economic
Council, the new team has
been charged with putting
"competitiveness" at the top
of its agenda, which ought to
be music to the ears of
business executives. Business
executives also have been
consulted on the
administration's continuing
efforts to prod China to alter
its stubbornly mercantilist
trade and economic policies,
an effort that takes center
stage again next week with
the visit of President Hu Jintao.
And while the details are still
being hammered out, the
budget the president will
submit next month is likely to
reflect many of the politically
difficult compromises laid out
by a majority of his deficit
reduction commission,
including all of its business
members.
These are more than just
gestures - they represent
substantive accommodation to
the business community's
stated priorities. By the
unwritten rules of political
reconciliation, they demand
and deserve a similar
response. The most obvious
and effective would be a clear
statement from the business
lobby that it will not support
Republicans in their effort to
repeal last year's health
reform legislation.
It is unimaginable that such an
olive branch could be offered
by the Chamber, which has
invested so much political and
reputational capital in repeal.
But the initial offer could
certainly come from the
Business Roundtable, which
represents the country's
largest corporations. The
Roundtable was an early
backer of a bipartisan reform
effort, along with the AARP
and the Service Employees
Union, and it never expressed
outright opposition to the final
legislation. Even now, the
Roundtable's focus is on
"trying to be helpful to make
an imperfect bill better,"
according to Larry Burton, its
executive director.
Another natural ally would be
the National Business Group
on Health, whose 300
corporate members provide
health insurance to 50 million
American workers, retirees
and family members.
President Helen Darling says
that although her members
are concerned the legislation
doesn't go far enough in
controlling health costs and
improving quality, they
understand the new system
will be better than anything
that would result from
outright repeal.
By renouncing repeal, the
business lobby could alter the
political dynamic around
health care. Repeal was never
likely in any case, given
continued Democratic control
of the Senate and the
prospect of a certain
presidential veto. But by
visibly siding with the
president, the lobby would win
favor at the White House
while cutting the political legs
out from under the repeal
effort among moderate and
independent voters whose
concerns have always been
more economic than
ideological. Moreover, these
business groups would put
themselves in the ideal
position to negotiate a modest
package of legislative and
regulatory "fixes" to the
legislation with the White
House and moderate
Democrats in Congress.
Those fixes might include
reasonable caps on punitive
damages in medical
malpractice suits, enhanced
powers for Medicare to
control spending and cost
growth, a modest reduction in
the scope (and thus the cost)
of the minimum benefit
package, and putting some
sort of floor on Medicaid
payment rates for doctors and
hospitals to prevent "cost
shifting" to private insurance
plans.
Republicans, faced with the
prospect of the near-certain
failure of repeal, might
welcome a compromise that
would allow them to declare a
partial victory over
Obamacare. The president,
meanwhile, might be glad to
put the issue behind him and
avoid an endless series of
legislative, regulatory and
judicial skirmishes over
implementation of the law.
This is an ideal opportunity to
test the good faith of a
business community whose
complaints about the Obama
administration were
overblown and more than a
tad hypocritical. The president
has assumed his share of the
responsibility for the
breakdown in relations and
taken several significant steps
toward detente, even at the
cost of alienating his political
base. Now it's time for those
who claim to be business
leaders to reciprocate - or
reveal themselves to be the
one-way-streeters that many
had suspected.

Source: Http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/13/AR2011011306083.html