Business Roundtable

Inaction in Washington is a question of leadership, BRT President John Engler told Fox's Neil Cavuto this week, and the failure of Congress to pass legislation authorizing Permanent Normal Trade Relations with Russia is a case in point.

From the interview Monday on Your World with Neil Cavuto, prompted by Cavuto's inquiry about the state of play in the presidential election and recent polling results:

A lot of these polls don’t know who’s going to vote, and I certainly don’t think they’re capturing the economic discomfort … It’s touched every family in America. Everybody’s got a family member, everybody knows somebody who’s been hurt in this economy. The wealth in America is down something like 40 percent in the last few years. We’ve got the lowest participation in the labor market: That’s why the unemployment rate is “only” just a little bit above 8 percent.

So we’ve got work to do. At the Roundtable, we’ve laid out an agenda, what we call “A CEO Plan for Jobs and Economic Growth.” We’ve got 100 CEOs coming into town this week, and once again we’re going to say, “You’ve got to stop dawdling. Get to work.” We’re even going to leave the Russian trade agreement undone, when that’s just a little step that would be helpful.

We can’t seem to get anything moving in this town, and that’s a question of leadership.