The Cabinet Members and Me

On this post yesterday I mentioned I was going to see the Treasury Secretary. Sorry, it was the Secretaries of Commerce and Energy. Not only was I wrong about that, but I was wrong about the number of people. The meeting was 20 small business men from all over Cincinnati. I sat two seats away from Don Evans and Spencer Abraham. I wrote my friend Chris an e-mail that described it:

I had a roundtable discussion yesterday - about 20 small business people were there - with Don Evans and Spencer Abraham. Two cabinet members. I almost felt important, but remembered what my mom always said, "Your not important!" They were both impressive. I sat two seats down from Don Evans and the competence and sheer power that he exuded was very intimidating.

The intelligence these guys showed blew me away. I got to thinking; who's Kerry going to put in these positions - the options are a little scary. His most important pick so far is a pretty boy twit whose resume is blown away by Dan Quayle's (which was quite good).

Three facts I thought interesting:

*What's happened with energy prices, Spencer Abraham says they predicted on the first day of office, but the energy bill has been blocked by the supermajority requiring Senate.
*Evans: Regulations costs small business 2x as much per employee as large corporations.
*Evans: The Small Business Optimism Index is at all time highs. I didn't even know something like that existed.

Hector Barreto of the Small Business Administration came in about a half hour late, but spoke to something near and dear to my heart: Regulations. This is one of The Five Taxes, remember? Anyway, he says by CBO estimates that their regulator savings directly to small business has been $31 Billion during the Bush administration. (N.B.: The back of Mr. Barreto's hands are the hairiest I've ever seen on a person. I'm talking fur here.)

Stay You.

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