Senator George McGovern was elected to the Senate in 1962. He left the Senate in 1981.
In June 2011, Forbes Magazine noted:
After leaving the Senate in 1981, McGovern hit the lecture circuit and in 1988 decided to invest his speaking fees in the Stratford Inn in Connecticut. He loved the idea of running a hotel. It went bankrupt a few years later, thanks in large part to the withering recession of 1990-91. But the experience gave McGovern new wisdom on how little politicians understand the arduous task of job creation.
I would like to point out that the recession of 1990-1991 was caused by a bi-partisan deal to ‘raise taxes on the rich.’ This was done in the form of instituting a tax on ‘luxury items’ such as expensive boats and jewelry. As boat sales and expensive jewelry sales dropped significantly, people in the boat-building business and some areas of the jewelry industry began to lose their jobs. As these people decreased their spending on going out to dinner, travel, and entertainment, those industries began to suffer and more people lost their jobs. At that point Americans began to curtail their spending in other areas because of fear of a recession, and the recession followed. This was a graphic illustration of the Laffer Curve at work.
The Forbes Magazine article quotes a Wall Street Journal editorial written by Senator McGovern in 1992.
In The Wall Street Journal, Senator McGovern states:
In 1988, I invested most of the earnings from this lecture circuit acquiring the leasehold on Connecticut’s Stratford Inn. Hotels, inns and restaurants have always held a special fascination for me. The Stratford Inn promised the realization of a longtime dream to own a combination hotel, restaurant and public conference facility–complete with an experienced manager and staff.
In retrospect, I wish I had known more about the hazards and difficulties of such a business, especially during a recession of the kind that hit New England just as I was acquiring the inn’s 43-year leasehold. I also wish that during the years I was in public office, I had had this firsthand experience about the difficulties business people face every day. That knowledge would have made me a better U.S. senator and a more understanding presidential contender.
Today we are much closer to a general acknowledgment that government must encourage business to expand and grow. Bill Clinton, Paul Tsongas, Bob Kerrey and others have, I believe, changed the debate of our party. We intuitively know that to create job opportunities we need entrepreneurs who will risk their capital against an expected payoff. Too often, however, public policy does not consider whether we are choking off those opportunities.
My own business perspective has been limited to that small hotel and restaurant in Stratford, Conn., with an especially difficult lease and a severe recession. But my business associates and I also lived with federal, state and local rules that were all passed with the objective of helping employees, protecting the environment, raising tax dollars for schools, protecting our customers from fire hazards, etc. While I never doubted the worthiness of any of these goals, the concept that most often eludes legislators is: `Can we make consumers pay the higher prices for the increased operating costs that accompany public regulation and government reporting requirements with reams of red tape.’ It is a simple concern that is nonetheless often ignored by legislators.
We have just elected a President who has the experience of running a business and dealing with government regulations. Hopefully, he has already learned the lessons Senator McGovern learned after he left office.