Last week President Obama made phone calls to a short list of CEOs of major American companies. His purpose was to discuss the upcoming fiscal cliff and ask for their input on the subject. This is an important subject seeing as in 2013 many companies will be losing a lot of government aid, and the President doesn’t want to see this fall on the shoulders of Middle Class America.
Tim Cook was on that short list of CEOs who received a phone call from President Obama about the government’s budget issues that are set to go into effect at the end of 2012. A White House official told CNN that the talks were part of the president’s “outreach on the need to find a balanced deficit-reduction solution that protects the middle class and continues to move our economy forward.” When the year 2013 is upon us, it will bring the end of some temporary government actions such as payroll cuts, certain tax breaks for businesses and other tax cuts, and it will mark the beginning of new taxes related to the President’s healthcare law. The idea behind calling all of these CEOs, and the main concern by the President, is to keep prices from rising on products and services. The loss of these government programs could end up with the consumer taking the brunt of the fallout.
Cook has been a contact for leaders in Washington looking to discuss financial issues in the past. Earlier this year, Apple’s chief executive met with John Boehner, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. It will be interesting to see how the advice and strategies all of these business leaders gave will play out. If anything, taking the time to reach out to all of these company leaders is a needed step in the right direction. Let’s hope it results in some swift government action. I know I don’t want to see the prices of any lovely Apple products go up, or any sur-charges added to Apple users for services like iCloud.
Source: CNN
