This Former CEO Tears Apart Obama’s Claim That Government Is Like The Private Sector

Center for Western Journalism
June 28, 2014

Photo Credit: YouTube/FoxNewsInsider

In a recent Fox News interview, former Heinz CEO Bill Johnson reacted to a recent comment by Barack Obama indicating that problems within the federal government are similar to what private businesses face.

“Are there programs that the government does that are a waste of money or aren’t working as well as they should be? Of course,” Obama said in a recent speech. “But I’ll tell you: if you work at any company in America, big company, you know, you’ll find some things they’re doing that aren’t all that efficient either.”

Host Neil Cavuto began the discussion by pointing out one significant difference between the public and private sectors.

“The company, when it screws up, it’s on the company’s dime,” he said. “When the government screws up, well, it’s on our dime.”

Johnson continued exposing the inherent fallacy of comparing the two realms.

“It’s a feckless comparison,” he asserted. “There’s just absolutely no comparison between business and the government.”

He alluded to three specific points to back up his claim.

“One, any business that’s not efficient and has a lot of waste can’t compete,” he said. “The government doesn’t have competition; business does.

“Second, we have owners and shareholders who demand we be efficient and not have a lot of waste and improve our margins and profitability.

“And third, if you are completely inefficient and continue to be inefficient, you are also out of a job, which they’re not.”

He accused Obama of formulating a statement “designed primarily to sort of move the debate someplace that it doesn’t belong.”

In the end, he said that businesses are generally “focused on doing what’s right,” recognizing that a failure to do so would mean it “goes bankrupt, gets bought, deals with activists, has shareholders that are unhappy, loses consumers, or has competitors who take their share away from them.”

The government, on the other hand, has no such incentives.

He then questioned why, if Obama truly looks at the government’s operation as akin to a business, he has done nothing to remedy the issues he acknowledged exist.

“If he knows there is inefficiency and waste,” Johnson concluded, “and knows where it is, why doesn’t he root it out and make the business more efficient, more effective, and more responsive to the American people?”