President Barack Obama’s jobs council is disbanding Thursday, two years after the president tapped top executives fromGeneral Electric Co. GE +0.22%,American Express Co. AXP -0.88%Boeing Co. BA -0.97% and other companies along with labor leaders and academics to advise him on steps to spur employment and economic growth.
For a president who has had a shaky relationship with the business comminuty–and particularly Wall Street–the council gave him some political cover from Republicans and business leaders who criticized his administration for enacting tough new regulations. In recent months, however, the council had become a political thorn as Republicans accused Mr. Obama of ignoring it.
The website for the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, as it’s formally called, shows it met four times since its inception – the last time on Jan. 17, 2012 — and held 18 “listening and action sessions” around the country with businesses and local leaders.
A White House official said the council was always supposed to end after its two-year charter expired. The charter ended today and isn’t being renewed, the official said, pointing to other advisory councils, including the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, that also expired after their charters ended.
Republicans have said the president should have sought more advice from the jobs council. “One thing the president could have done instead of wasting so much time blaming others would have been to convene the jobs council he created amidst so much fanfare,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said Thursday. “He hasn’t done that for more than a year. In fact, from what I understand, the council is expected to disband today after having met only four times since 2011.”
Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio), said that “the president treated his Jobs Council as more of a nuisance than a vehicle to spur job creation.”
The White House official said the administration acted on most of the jobs council’s recommendations, including retrofitting government buildings for energy efficiency, taking steps to create construction jobs and making it easier for Americans to start small businesses.
The group also called for expanding domestic oil and gas drilling, removing regulatory barriers and revamping the tax code. Mr. Obama has said he supports overhauling the individual and business tax codes, though little progress has been made on either.
The White House official said plans are under way for a new, expanded effort to work with the business community and other outside groups to gather advice on revamping the tax code, expediting infrastructure projects and promoting entrepreneurship.
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