GNO Inc President and CEO Michael Hecht returned today for his weekly segment with Newell to discuss the state of business and industry in the metro area as the nation crosses the halfway point of 2021 and the economy continues to improve after a rocky pandemic year.
“Congress is out of session, but still a lot of banter back and forth on this infrastructure bill,” Newell began. “Mitch McConnell has kind of doubled down here in the last 48 hours, saying he's just simply going to bury anything that comes across, so it’s not looking very rosy for any Democratic plan at the present time.”
“It's really unfortunate that we are at this point right now - I was fairly sure a couple of weeks ago that this was going to proceed as we've kind of had always predicted,” Hecht said. “There was going to be a bipartisan portion - around a trillion dollars - on what we would call traditional infrastructure, roads, bridges, maybe broadband. And then if the Democrats felt they had to do anything else, that would just go through on reconciliation. It kind of got sideways when the President said the quiet part out loud, that they were going to do both. That jammed, some of the centrist senators who had pushed for this, like Bill Cassidy. I still believe that it will get back on track. I still think that the entire country recognizes the desperate need for investment in roads and bridges. It's been decades since we've had a major infrastructure bill in the country. I think that by the time this is done, when they get back from recess, we will get that done. Whatever happens after that will happen. But it is hanging in the balance right now and it's concerning.”
“You are confident that they will do this even in light of a number of major October elections in major cities across this country?” Newell pressed.
“As we get closer to the October elections, it's going to get harder and harder, with the inclination to be more partisan and appeal to the base,” Hecht answered. “And more than that, the extremes of the base are going to get greater and greater. I'm definitely less sanguine than I was two weeks ago.”
“Michael, there’s a lot of chatter about a special veto session here at the state level - your thoughts?”
“This is one that I am hopeful that we can avoid, but there's been a lot of tradition broken with Governor Edwards’ tenure relative to the legislature,” Hecht said. “Since the beginning, they've pushed back on his leadership choices, on his revenue forecasts - we could actually have a veto override session. We've been talking to some of the legislators, and it doesn't seem like everybody really wants to do this. I think most legislators want to call it a successful session and go home, but there is still some chatter particularly about the transgender bill and about the concealed carry bill. It's TBD but if we do have one, that would go forward in a couple of weeks.”
“The transgender issue - is that still as much of a burning issue for the NCAA and others relative to special events, playoffs, things of that nature? Are you hearing anything on that front?”
“I don't think that it's gone away as an issue… it's a complex issue on both sides, relative to the rights of transgender people and relative to the rights of women. But I think that if you look at this objectively relative to sporting and other events and the damage that this could inflict on us, I think, unfortunately it's still real.”
Hear the entire interview in the audio player below.
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