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January 28, 2009
Jack Welch on the Stimulus Package
Hannity
HANNITY: And joining us now for analysis is the president of Jack Welch LLC, a former CEO of GE, Jack Welch, one of the smartest business minds.
Good to see you, Jack. Thanks for being with us. This is the single biggest, most massive transfer of wealth to Washington and bureaucrats. Good idea or bad idea?
JACK WELCH, PRESIDENT OF JACK WELCH LLC: Well, look, I think what you've got to recognize is Barack Obama won. He said that to people.
HANNITY: What? What? What?
WELCH: He won.
HANNITY: Wait a minute. What?
WELCH: Reality says he won, and this isn't his bill. This is a bill by the crowd over on that side of the street.
HANNITY: Yes.
WELCH: Who's (INAUDIBLE). I'm not ready to give up on it. It's a crazy bill right now.
HANNITY: Yes.
WELCH: But I think it -- I think he's hired some smart guys in Summers and Geithner, and I think hopefully with him and Geithner and Summers, we'll get a modification. This is round one, and I'm not going to jump up at this. But let's -- the reason why the public supports it right now, they support Barack Obama.
HANNITY: All right, but we've got to look at the nitty-gritty of this.
WELCH: Oh it's awful.
HANNITY: This is pork barrel spending, this is big government spending.
WELCH: This is 10 percent or so for stimulus. Now we've got to have -- we should break it into three parts. We should have job creation, and we ought to measure each one of those. We ought to have safety net programs, taking care of those that have been (INAUDIBLE) by this tsunami, And then we ought to take all this mess out of there and vote on it separately some other day and have a different discussion.
HANNITY: Let me ask you. Look, the Heritage Foundation did an analysis. CBO did an analysis and what they determined is the following. That this -- Barack Obama said this is a stimulus, a jolt, to the economy. The better part of this money is not going to be spent until 2010, 2011, 2012.
So how is that a stimulus? We'll be out of the recession by then.
WELCH: Let's hope when they get into it, they're going to fix it, OK? This is round one, Sean. Don't get all upset about this one.
HANNITY: Well.
WELCH: This is round one.
HANNITY: If we were to break down the dollars, the Heritage Foundation analysis of this, $6700 of debt for every household in America. We could give $2700 to every man, woman, and child if we wanted to give them a check, and that for every job we create if we go to the high side of their estimate, $217,000 we'd pay for a new job.
That's -- that's unheard of.
WELCH: We don't want this bill. We all agree on that. I've got another complaint, though.
HANNITY: What's your.
WELCH: My complaint is about the way they've invested in companies. They're not investors in the automotive industry, in the banks, over $100 million in AIG, and they're not acting like investors. They're acting like prosecutors. So what they've done is taken my money, your money, thrown it into these companies, and now they're saying you can't merge, you can't give bonuses, you can't do this, you can't go to the Super Bowl.
You can't do these things.
HANNITY: Let me ask you this because.
WELCH: They've got to be out rallying these employees.
HANNITY: You ran one of the biggest best companies in America. You had to make profits for you shareholders. You ought to be successful. Government has bankrupted Social Security, Medicare. They're going into huge debt here, they've destroyed our educational system.
Why should I have any faith the government can solve this economic problem? Why?
WELCH: Yes, but Sean, let's take this -- what I'm talking about. We spent the money, your money and my money. Now I don't want to just leave it there. It'd be like buying a house, and then because you didn't like your neighbors burning the house, not painting it, not doing anything with it.
Sean, we've got to take the AIG's and the banks and Detroit, and we've got to support -- if you don't like the CEOs, throw them out. If you don't like the -- throw him out. But you want to take care of the employees, bill those companies, and we get our money back.
HANNITY: Last question. Is this socialism? Is America leaving behind capitalism as we know it and embracing, you know, European socialism?
WELCH: Look, we got ourselves in a mess, and we're trying to get out of it. Capitalism, we're not the rails a little bit, now we got to get it back on the rails, and we will. But these guys spend -- they're spending our money and just not managing it is bad stuff.
HANNITY: All right. Jack Welch, it's good to see you, my friend.
WELCH: Thanks, Sean. Nice to be here.
