White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley Can’t Defend Obama’s ‘Indefensible’ Economic Policies

Updated: 12:01 AM 06/18/11

By Matthew Boyle - The Daily Caller

White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley took heat from business executives Thursday for the Obama administration’s regulatory expansions. Daley also said he didn’t have any good answers for some of what President Obama is doing and expressed frustration about the “bureaucratic stuff that’s hard to defend.”

“Sometimes you can’t defend the indefensible,” Daley said at a National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) meeting.

Daley couldn’t answer basic questions and continually faced criticism from the executives in the room. The business leaders even applauded each other’s criticism of the administration. “At one point, the room erupted in applause when Massachusetts utility executive Doug Starrett, his voice shaking with emotion, accused the administration of blocking construction on one of his facilities to protect fish, saying government ‘throws sand into the gears of progress,’” wrote Peter Wallsten and Jia Lynn Yang in the Washington Post.
Americans for Limited Government Communications Director and former Labor Department Public Affairs Chief of Staff Rick Manning told The Daily Caller that Daley’s inability to defend Obama’s regulations is an indication that the administration’s plans aren’t working. Manning also points out that Daley’s meeting may have large political implications.


“Business community to William Daley, your Jedi tricks don’t work on us,” Manning said in an email. “The chickens are coming home to roost from the wholesale assault by Obama on the free enterprise system and the private job creators who make it run. The meeting itself is incredible in that it demonstrates just how vulnerable Obama feels in 2012.”
(As goes the economy, so goes Ohio?)
The Workforce Fairness Institute’s Fred Wszolek told The Daily Caller that Daley’s lackluster performance is even more questionable when comes to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and its campaign against the Boeing Company. The NLRB has gone after the Boeing Company for opening a new plant in South Carolina. Boeing’s new plant is an addition to its already-existing production lines in Washington state. The NLRB’s case hinges on whether Boeing made the decision to open the new plant as “retaliation” against machinist unions in Washington, even though no jobs were lost there. In fact, Boeing has added thousands of new jobs in Washington.
As a former Boeing board member before taking on his White House job, Daley voted in favor of opening the new South Carolina plant. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham has challenged Daley to come out and defend his vote in the face of the NLRB’s case, but he hasn’t yet done so.
“Bill Daley is White House chief of staff in an administration that is accusing a company where he served on the board of violating Federal labor law,” Wszolek said in an email. “The individual who launched the complaint against the Boeing Company was appointed to the post by President Obama and is currently a nominee. Now, to top it all off, Daley states he cannot defend the ‘indefensible’ conduct of his own administration, which presumably speaks to the Boeing matter.”
Wszolek questions Daley’s ability to continue “ethically” serving the president.
“All of this leads to one question: how can Daley serve in an administration that he cannot defend and believes his actions were unethical?,” Wszolek said.