Opinion: Washington's Endangered Species

(Aug. 23) -- If Washington seems out of ideas on how to get the private-sector jobs machine running again, there's a pretty straightforward reason -- the people in government have virtually no experience in business.

In a major departure from prior administrations, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone in the current administration with any real business experience. Even offices such as treasury and commerce secretary, which have traditionally been occupied by successful business people, are occupied by a career central banker (with his own tax-compliance problems) and a lawyer/politician.

The situation is little different in Congress, where the "barons" -- Pelosi, Frank, Dodd, Waxman, Reid, Rangel -- are all career "public servants."

This increasing disconnect between the government and the business world is a big, if unrecognized, problem, if for no other reason than that it deprives government officials of the knowledge and experience that successful business leaders can bring to solving difficult problems.

In my day job as a corporate attorney, drafting and negotiating numerous business contracts, I see men and women grappling with real-world business problems and coming up with real-world solutions. The solutions aren't always elegant and sometimes they don't work at all, but they represent the best efforts of all concerned to use the resources they have, often implementing new technologies or methodologies or using old ones for new purposes, to bring about a positive result.

Contrast this with the efforts of government, which increasingly today consist of saying "no," "you must," "you're liable" or "you've got to help someone else." Whether the issue is medical coverage, trade policy, credit or loan structure and pricing, car propulsion systems or something else, we have government acting more and more as czar or cop, telling business what it must or must not do and getting in the way of transactions that would otherwise happen.

Granted, the debacles of recent years necessitate some involvement of this nature, but more and more it seems as though government is intentionally or unintentionally impeding the work of business and preventing economic recovery.

But historically we've had a less adversarial relationship, where government felt -- at least in part -- that its job was to foster a successful private sector, because government officials to varying degrees came from the private sector. While the adversarial situation we see at present is based in part upon ideological differences -- which are themselves problematic -- I think it's also the result of ignorance about what matters to the private sector.

Even with the best of intentions, it's at least difficult, and maybe impossible, to do things that are good for private business when you know nothing about private business.

For example, it's a lot more difficult to craft good tax policy when your understanding of tax policy and its implications is based only upon studies by think tanks or the Congressional Budget Office than when it's based upon actually writing quarterly (or monthly) checks for estimated income/self-employment and payroll taxes, as business people (including my clients and myself) do.

Similarly, it's a lot easier to decry the greedy, overreaching collection or foreclosure efforts of lenders when you've never had to collect money for goods and services you've provided, in order to meet your payroll and otherwise cover your overhead, let alone pay yourself a salary. The same goes for supposedly aggressive or complicated pricing terms, which often are good faith efforts to allow for inevitable credit losses and still stay in business.

What we need more of in Washington are those who combine a broad understanding of the nuances and "macro" implications of public policy with an appreciation of what makes the private sector tick on a "micro" level, and what constitutes good and bad assistance and incentives.

We need those who have successfully built or built up businesses and been personally invested -- in a financial and an emotional sense -- in such efforts, so that they can appreciate what government can and cannot do.

Get more of those types in Washington and watch the growth-generating ideas start to flow.