Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein is among the executives scheduled to meet with U.S. House Republican leaders on the so- called “fiscal cliff,” according to a House aide.
House Speaker John Boehner will host the meeting Nov. 28 in the Capitol building. Others invited include Thomas Wilson, the president and CEO of Allstate Corp., Doug Oberhelman, the CEO of Caterpillar Inc., David Cote, the chairman and CEO of Honeywell International Inc. and Mark Bertolini, the chairman and CEO of Aetna Inc., according to the aide who asked for anonymity because the meeting hasn’t been announced.
Lawmakers, executives and interest groups from across the ideological spectrum are meeting in Washington as policy makers confront more than $600 billion in tax increases and spending cuts set to begin in January.
Blankfein was among the Wall Street executives who signed an Oct. 18 letter to President Barack Obama and lawmakers warning that the inability to address the cuts and tax increases would result in something “the still-fragile U.S. economy cannot sustain.”
The Republican lawmakers, which will include Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia and Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the third ranked Republican in the House, will be joined by Erskine Bowles, the co-founder of the Campaign to Fix the Debt and co-chairman of Obama’s 2010 fiscal commission.
Greg Sherrill, chairman and CEO of Tenneco Inc., and Nicholas Calio, president and CEO of the Airlines for America, are also scheduled to attend, said the House aide.
The invited CEOs are members of the Fix the Debt campaign’s “CEO Fiscal Leadership Council.” The group, co-founded by Bowles and former Senator Alan Simpson, the other co-chair on Obama’s fiscal commission, is “a non-partisan movement to put America on a better fiscal and economic path,” according to its Web site.
Maya MacGuineas, the president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and spokeswoman for the campaign, is also scheduled to attend the meeting, according to the aide.
Bloomberg News
