GE and Obama's Big Government Corporatism

The American Conservative reviews Timothy P. Carney's Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses:

Chapter 9, “GE: The For-Profit Arm of the Obama Administration,” is worth the price of the book and provides a perfect case study. Just days after Obama’s inauguration, General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt wrote to shareholders, “The global economy, and capitalism, will be ‘reset’ in several important ways. The interaction between government and business will change forever. In a reset economy, the government will be a regulator; and also an industry policy champion, a financier, and a key partner.” Translation: Washington will subsidize our industry, provide grants for our research, and mandate our products for environmental reasons. Kaching! “The company makes light bulbs and refrigerators, sure,” writes Carney, “but it also has a finance arm, a transportation arm, a healthcare arm, a communications arm, and more. The above letter from Immelt reveals what these arms all have in common: they all reach out for government favors.”

Let us count the ways. GE launched its own PAC to solicit donations from its employees for candidates “who share GE’s values and goals.” Unsurprisingly, Obama received more money from GE employees than any other politician. Immelt now sits on Obama’s economic recovery board and enjoys a weekly phone call with White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee. In the past decade, GE has spent more on lobbying than BlueCross, Exxon, or Altria, the owners of Philip Morris. Former Sens. Trent Lott (R) and John Breaux (D) lobby for GE. And former Rep. Dick Gephardt, tribune of the working man, lobbies for NBC Universal, which as we go to press is a subsidiary of the GE conglomerate. If by any chance Obama forgets to ask himself “What would Jeff Immelt do?” before signing legislation, GE has recruited Linda Daschle, wife of that authentic North Dakotan voice of reform, Tom, as another of its lobbyists.

Where’s the profit in all this influence? For one, GE has been investing in “carbon offset” assets that have almost no value unless the Obama administration institutes its cap-and-trade energy plans. Sure enough, HR 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, is a GE lobbyist’s dream come true. The bill aims to provide manufacturers with “incentives” to sell energy-efficient appliances. Those enticements would mean that GE stands to reap $75 of taxpayer money for each dishwasher it sells until 2013, $200 for each refrigerator, and up to $300 for each hot-water heater. As an added bonus, GE gets tax breaks and billions in loan guarantees for its wind-power projects.

More egregiously, GE lobbied for the ban on its own incandescent light bulbs, a reliable product that for more than a century has turned a profit and employed thousands of factory workers in Kentucky and Ohio. Why would they do that? So they could blame “government regulation” for closing down their costly American plants, of course. GE manufactures its more expensive fluorescent bulbs—generally hated, but now federally mandated—in China and the Philippines.

GE is in the rent seeking business of looting taxpayers.