Bush's Lousy Business Policy Hits Drugs, Energy
By James J. Cramer
10/21/2003 09:49 AM EDT
This administration is supposed to be pro-business and pro-growth. But you wouldn't know it from dealing with the legislative agenda. In fact, the only thing I have seen this administration do for business, besides award a no-bid contract to Halliburton (HAL:NYSE - commentary - research) and give WorldCom huge Iraq and Afghanistan contracts, is hurt it.
The most important issue facing business today in Washington is tort reform, and it all starts with asbestos tort reform.
We keep hearing that Big Labor is blocking the asbestos bill. I have to laugh at that. Big labor hasn't blocked anything in Washington in years. What's being blocked is the administration's attention span. Despite repeated pronouncements on "Kudlow & Cramer" that the top cabinet officials, Dick Cheney and President Bush all are pro-tort reform, not one lifted a darned finger to push the big asbestos package through. If the goal is to make big labor look bad, there are sure a lot of other ways to do that. We all know that the law favors the plaintiffs in these big class action cases. The possibility of putting some limits, the possibility of making it so companies that have little or nothing to do with asbestos get protection, was so important on Wall Street that you would think someone in the White House would notice. But this President Bush is as deaf to Wall Street as the last President Bush. As slavish as President Clinton was to the tort bar, I bet he could have gotten this reform through.
Or take this energy bill. We finally have a chance, post-Sept. 11, to fix our energy policy and be in a stronger position when it comes to the Arabs and OPEC. What do we do? We have Iraq join OPEC, squandering any big opportunity to reduce oil dependence, and we end up spending all the time discussing the darned Arctic National Wildlife Refuge because the president could give a darn about the environment. What a botching! No nuclear. No taxes on gasoline in return for a deal to drill domestically. What a disgrace. No wonder the energy stocks are in the tank; this energy bill is a total joke and both sides know it.
So, what has this administration accomplished? Something Clinton's couldn't do, despite repeated tries: It has set us on a course to destroy the profitability and incentives of the drug companies, the best industry we have, save software and semiconductors. Truly amazing. Bush, so eager to insure a victory in Florida and Pennsylvania and a couple of other states populated by lots of old folks, is going to allow the importation of Canadian drugs, and thus Canadian price controls.
It is a marvel that my television partner, Larry Kudlow, is so pro-Bush given this sorry record. But then again, Bush really isn't pro-growth; he's just anti-tax because his advisors have convinced him that cutting taxes is all that matters, either to starve the beast or make wealthier people even wealthier, which eventually should trickle down to those undeserving poor folk who're choosing to be poor because they didn't get into Yale or something.
<font color=red>Yeah, it's gotten that out of control. <font color=black>
People on Wall Street often wonder why I was so pro-Clinton and yet pro-higher stock prices. You know why? Because Clinton was much more pro-growth than Bush ever will be, and Clinton's Treasury department was much more positive in its willingness to further growth worldwide. You know why?
Because he had smarter people around him who knew that cutting taxes wasn't the only option.
As I watch this administration discourage or squander so many growth opportunities, I am astounded at how the Democrats keep missing this stuff. It should be obvious to anyone who can pick up a phone and talk to Rubin or Summers for 10 minutes. This White House can seize the moment only sequentially, and right now the moment has been about making sure we go it alone in the world and bash the trading partners who haven't been alienated from us yet.
Call me nostalgic for the old days, the '90s, when I didn't have to fear Washington when I picked stocks. In the meantime, I'd short some drugs and some energy stocks. They can't rally to save their lives. |
