American business attacks generous hand that feeds it
Corporate profits have ballooned on Obama's watch but executives still are not happy
Tom Donohue, the president of the US Chamber of Commerce, said last week that higher taxes and a "flood of new regulations" would damage an already subpar economy.
"In many ways, we're going backwards," he said.
Such complaints, echoed by corporate executives throughout President Barack Obama's first term, obscure one fact: American business has never had it so good.
US firms' after-tax profits have grown 171 per cent under Obama, more than under any president since the second world war, and are now at their highest level relative to the size of the economy since the government began keeping records in 1947.
Business leaders cite low labour costs in an era of high unemployment, the Federal Reserve's easy-money policies, and their own management savvy for the profit boom. Prosperity has come in spite of the president, not because of him, they say.
"I don't think he deserves any credit," said John Engler, president of the Business Roundtable, a Washington-based association of chief executives.