Obama vs. Romney: How Staples and Walmart Are Voting with respect to Finances

Critics of Barack Obama have continuously claimed him to be the scourge of big scale business over the last few years. Obama’s excessive regulations over Wall Street and elevated tax rates for corporations are seen to be unfair by many people.

Critics have widely claimed that all of Obama’s actions consist of ill planned socialistic policies, which undermine the very basic foundations of what capitalism believes in. This has boosted businesses of debt settlement companies vastly.

While all these arguments keep on taking place, Jim Sinegal, the co-founder of one of the biggest companies in America, Costco, came up with argument against Obama’s critics. He supported the president’s actions and economic policies by claiming them to be a road-map for America’s long term stability and growth.

Sinegal claimed that Obama’s policies are the building blocks for the future. He mentioned that Costco was able to create 116,000 jobs for Americans and they are going to further increase this number in the coming year by 7,000.

Sinegal claimed to be a proud Obama supporter and stated his investment strategies, which were very much in line with the president’s policies including investments in transportation, sustainable energy and education.

Staples

It was clearly observed that Sinegal’s speech was against the previously conducted Republican National Committee address conducted by Tom Stemberg. Tom Stemberg, the co-founder of Staples, like Sinegal, also mentioned the role played by his company in promoting job creation. He mentioned that Staples employs almost 90,000 American citizens.

The Mitt Romney supporter, Stemberg, also mentioned that Staples has played an important role in helping small companies and several entrepreneurs initiating their businesses on their own, which also increased the use of debt settlement companies. He gave great credit to Romney for his organisation’s success during the address.

Mitt Romney is a private investor and a former business consultant. Stemberg explained Romney, the man who has been part of Staples from the very beginning, as a person who gets excited at the idea of saving money on things such as paper clips.

During his address, Stemberg drew a line between Romney and Obama by asking the audience that, who they would go with, who would be a better president, a person who is aware of how to save a dollar on papers and pen or a person who knows how to waste millions of dollars on Solyndra?

Romney has vast business experience. This has proven very beneficial for his campaign. Having lots of experience in managing companies, Romney is able to do clever budgeting. But, side by side many decisions made by him, such as decisions to shutter factories at Bain Capital, brought Romney to an uneasy position during the discussion he did relating to his plans to build and improve American Businesses.

Stemberg backed up Romney’s experiences as a brilliant business builder. He stated that Bain Capital provided services to Bright Horizons Day Care for five years and this company now is employing over 19,000 Americans.

At the end, Stemberg claimed that democrats are unable to get it because they are not believers of entrepreneurs’ spirit and are unaware of what it means to risk finance to create something completely new.

Wal-Mart

While Staples and Costco continues taking part in discussions and arguments related to presidential candidates, the Waltons, owners of Wal-Mart, have deliberately remained silent and done for private contributions.

Wal-Mart has taken part in several Republican Congressional campaigns. The Waltons are supporting Mitt Romney indirectly. The founder of Wal-Mart, Sam Walton, has contributed $200,000 to Romney’s Restore our Future and PAC. He along with his sister has also contributed to Romney’s campaign.

Romney’s presidential policies are quite in favour of the Waltons. No wonder they are backing him up. Romney has suggested the abolishment of estate tax, which has increased to 35% this year and will further rise in 2013. He has also suggested keeping dividend tax rate and capital gains tax at 15% while Obama is planning to increase both of them to 35%.

Obama can be considered to be in a weak position when it comes to finances as it can be seen that the Waltons, who currently own more than $60 billion worth finance, are backing Romney in the presidential campaigns.