Obama talks jobs with Jobs, other tech leaders
President Barack Obama is assembling the biggest names in Silicon Valley to confer on jobs and innovation, trying to get leaders from companies like Google and Apple behind his push to keep spending on high-tech initiatives even as Republicans are out to slash the budget.
Wunderkind Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, and Steve Jobs, the Apple founder and CEO who announced last month that he was taking his third medical leave, are among a dozen business leaders meeting with Obama in California Thursday evening. Also scheduled to be there: the heads of Twitter, Yahoo, NetFlix and Oracle, and the president of Stanford University.
The dinner at a private home in the San Francisco Bay area is closed to the media.
Obama wants to spend billions on clean energy, education, high-speed Internet and other programs even as his new budget proposal calls for a five-year freeze on domestic spending in certain other areas. The approach is getting a frosty reception from newly empowered Republicans on Capitol Hill, who are pushing steep cuts to a wide range of programs and balking at new spending.
The president argues that targeted spending, including education initiatives aimed at producing a more sophisticated workforce, is crucial for job creation and future U.S. competitiveness with other nations. A stamp of approval from the Silicon Valley’s leading innovators and job creators could help.
At the same time, the president’s meeting Thursday extends outreach to the business community that he’s embarked upon since Democrats suffered steep losses in the November midterm elections. With unemployment stuck at 9 percent, Obama has been pleading with corporate America to hire.
After his stop in California, Obama was planning to tour Intel Corp.’s semiconductor manufacturing facility in Hillsboro, Ore., on Friday with CEO Paul Otellini. Otellini, who was among a group of CEOs who met privately with Obama in December, has criticized Obama’s policies as creating uncertainty for business.
We clearly need a businessman in office and more entrepreneurs in the Administration. Too much time is spent on talk while people are out of work and spending keeps soaring along with the unemployment rate. It is a state of emergency!
Asking business owners to hire, having “talks” and assuring them that the economic environment is stable does not promote hiring. Especially, if the CEOs continue to criticize government policies that they claim are creating uncertainty for business. Stop spending, stop spending, stop spending!