Neil Cavuto just can't catch a break. Today, another CEO of an American company shot down his pet theory that President Obama's tax policies are somehow harmful to the success of American business and the economy. Cavuto, ever skeptical of even the slightest economic upswing, refuses to believe the facts: notably, that Obama's position that tax cuts should not be permanently extended for the richest Americans is not what is keeping American companies from hiring workers.
During an interview with Tractor Supply Co. chairman and CEO Jim Wright about how companies plan to expand in 2011, Cavuto suggested that the recent success of Wright's company could face “uncertainty” in two years following the expiration of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest earners. Cavuto also went on to suggest that the health care reform law would further cast a pall over American business. But Wright squarely put his company's success and/or failure on the shoulders of consumers:
WRIGHT: Well, probably the best thing, being a retailer, we have a tremendous amount of data. Going back to the early days of 2008, we saw consumers change very abruptly. As a result, we called the recession three weeks into that year. So anything that would give us pause right now would be a change in the behavior of our consumers, not the behavior or the consumer confidence.
Similarly, in an interview with Cummins Inc. chairman and CEO Theodore “Tim” Solso a week ago, Cavuto suggested that businesses were unwilling to expand because they were “scared” of Obama and “scared that tax rates might not last much longer beyond the two years they've been extended.”
Solso, who was recently honored by MarketWatch as one of its five finalists for “CEO of the Decade,” flatly disagreed:
SOLSO: Well, there is a lot of uncertainty, at least in the North American economy and also in the European economy. And I don't think people want to hire unless you're certain that the business is gonna be there. You don't want to have to lay people off again. But I can just say that, you know, the tax policy or depreciation rates, depending on capital expenditure, don't really -- hasn't really influenced us.
You know, we hire the people when we have the business. We invest the capital when we need to. It has nothing to do with the depreciation schedule. So the kinds of policies that you're referring to really don't influence us one way or another as to how we invest.
This is a theory Cavuto has clung to in his efforts to defend the Bush-era tax cuts for high earners. During a November 2010 show for example, Cavuto argued that businesses “should ... be the ones who see their taxes cut so that they can hire these same folks for whom we keep extending their jobless benefits.” He also attacked millionaires who supported ending the Bush-era tax cuts, telling them to “quit lecturing” and accused Democrats of engaging in “class warfare.” He even wrongly shouted down a guest on the show for correctly pointing out that "[f]or every dollar you spend in tax cuts, you get back 30 cents to the economy."
It's no wonder Cavuto refuses to face the truth. Even when economists continually point out that extending tax cuts “does not create much incentive for [businesses] to hire more workers,” he keeps his head in the sand. How many more CEOs will he have to host before he finally gets it?