Writing Sample #15: November Cheat Sheet (QSR, November 2008)

Oh, how the times have changed.

Last January, QSR took a closer look at the presidential frontrunners and their thoughts on key restaurant industry issues. At the time, Senator Barack Obama was largely seen as a longshot while Senator John McCain’s candidacy appeared in ruin.

But the winds of change swirled and tossed around one of the most anticipated presidential elections in decades. Beginning with the Iowa caucuses, Obama surged and held off a Hillary Clinton charge while McCain resurrected his campaign and locked up the Republican nod in quick time.

With the rookie Senator from Illinois and the veteran legislator from Arizona earning their respective parties’ presidential nominations, a heated contest commands the nation’s attention. As the race for the White House intensifies and voting day nears, we revisit Senator Obama and Senator McCain, taking a closer look at each man’s views on critical industry issues.

American with Disabilities Amendments Act and Notification Act
The ADA Amendments Act, a compromise reached following on the heels of the more drastic Americans with Disabilities Restoration Act, maintains the previous definition of a disability as well as the requirement that an individual must demonstrate that he or she is qualified for the job. After passing the House in June, the ADA Amendments Act now sits in the Senate.

Both Obama and McCain, a co-sponsor of the ADA in 1990, have voiced support for expanding the landmark legislation and strengthening its implementation. While McCain has cited a more thorough, specific definition of “disability,” Obama favors the aforementioned ADA Restoration Act, which seeks to redefine what constitutes a protected impairment under the ADA—a redefinition many employers feel is far too loose as it could apply to employees with neck strains, eyeglasses, or even tennis elbow.

The ADA Notification Act, meanwhile, would provide restaurants up to 90 days to review and repair alleged accessibility issues while helping to protect restaurants from frivolous ADA violation lawsuits. McCain has maintained his support for the cause, which would allow business owners the opportunity to become ADA compliant without the threat of costly legal tussles. While Obama, a former civil rights lawyer, has not spoken exclusively on the ADA Notification Act, he has repeatedly indicated his desire to appoint judges and justices who uphold the “essential message of liberty and inclusion.”

Biofuels
Since his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Obama trumpeted his support for biofuels, citing Brazil as a nation that has quickly escaped its complete reliance on crude oil from outside nations. Obama has been consistent in his message to find new energy sources and weaken the dependence on foreign oil. Even prior to the start of the primary season, Obama proposed a $150 billion fund to finance new biorefineries and stated his desire to see all new cars run on E85.

Today, Obama’s campaign site hosts this message: “Advances in biofuels…and other new technologies that produce synthetic petroleum from sustainable feedstocks offer tremendous potential to break our addiction to oil. Barack Obama will work to ensure that these clean alternative fuels are developed and incorporated into our national supply as soon as possible.”

While McCain, once a critic of ethanol, supports wider use of biofuels, he rejects any mention of subsidies or mandates for ethanol production; instead, McCain favors such money traveling to increased research and development of renewable energies. In particular, McCain worried that biofuel mandates would challenge the simple economic rules of supply-and-demand. When the 2007 Senate energy bill called for a five-fold increase in ethanol production by 2022, McCain shot back that ethanol was on its way to divulging one-third of the nation’s corn crop in 2008.
“This subsidized (ethanol) program—paid for by taxpayer dollars—has contributed to pain at the cash register, at the dining room table, and a devastating food crisis throughout the world,” he said.

Food Safety
In February 2008, the U.S. Department of Agriculture led a recall of 143 million pounds of frozen beef, a move that prompted Obama to release this statement: “When I am President, it will not be business as usual when it comes to food safety. I will provide additional resources to hire more federal food inspectors. I will also call on the Department of Agriculture to examine whether federal food safety laws need to be strengthened, in particular to provide greater protections against tainted food being used in the National School Lunch Program.”

Obama soon followed with the introduction of a Senate bill in July aimed at further addressing food safety. While he did not suggest any changes at the procedural level of food processing, he did propose a $25 million grant for state and local food safety agencies to boost capacity in order to improve detection, outbreak communication and coordination, and surveillance.

McCain, who spoke at this year’s NRA convention in May, has not addressed the food safety issue and his campaign office did not offer comment on the issue.

Health Care
Obama has pledged to create a national health care plan, one which includes: guaranteed eligibility; comprehensive benefits; affordable premiums, co-pays, and deductibles; and the creation of a National Health Insurance Exchange to help those individuals who wish to purchase a private insurance plan. He has also discussed expanding Medicaid and creating a Small Business Health Tax Credit to provide, his campaign says, “small businesses with a refundable tax credit of up to 50 percent on premiums paid by small businesses on behalf of their employees.” The new credit, he feels, “will provide a strong incentive to small businesses to offer high quality health care to their workers and help improve the competitiveness of America’s small businesses.” He has said he would demand employers make a meaningful contribution to their employees’ health care needs.

In contrast, McCain has repeatedly insisted that Americans themselves should be in charge of their health care needs, believing that competition would restore control to the patients and allow them to select the plan that best fills their needs. Striking against universal health care plans, McCain charged, “We will replace the inefficiency, irrationality, and uncontrolled costs of the current system with the inefficiency, irrationality, and uncontrolled costs of a government monopoly.”

McCain has also championed portability in health care, plans that would move with the individual from job to job. He has also trumpeted the benefits of Health Savings Accounts, tax-preferred accounts used to pay insurance premiums and other health costs. He believes affordable health care is possible without a federal mandate and has indicated his wish to provide $2,500 refundable tax credits for individuals and $5,000 for families.

Immigration Reform
Few issues evoke as much debate and chatter among industry insiders than immigration, given that immigrants—both legal and illegal—constitute a healthy chunk of the restaurant industry’s workforce. That reality has continually pushed immigration to the front of the 2008 presidential election, leading both McCain and Obama to articulate clear positions on the issue.

McCain, no stranger to the issue as his home state of Arizona borders Mexico, sponsored the bi-partisan Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006, one that promised to increase security along the U.S.-Mexican border, allow long-time, law abiding illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, and increase the number of guest workers. Obama, in fact, voted in favor of that bill.

Today, McCain sings a similar tune, though he insists amnesty has never been a part of the discussion. At a Republican debate in January, McCain outlined his priorities.

“We will secure the borders first when I am president,” he said. “Then we will move onto the other aspects of this issue, as importantly as tamper-proof biometric documents, which then, unless an employer hires someone with those documents, that employer will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Obama has vowed to “fix the system” in such a way that it eliminates the need to address the immigration problem again in the near future. He has proposed tougher policies on employers who hire illegal immigrants. During a Democratic primary radio debate on NPR, Obama summarized his overall position, noting specifically his belief that immigrants—illegal or not—should have a pathway to citizenship and share in basic American rights.

“I think that if [the immigrants] are illegal, then they should not be able to work in this country. That is part of the principle of comprehensive reform, which we're going to crack down on employers who are hiring them and taking advantage of them,” he said. “But I also want to give them a pathway, so that they can earn citizenship, earn a legal status, start learning English, pay a significant fine, and go to the back of the line. But they can then stay here and they can have the ability to enforce a minimum wage that they're paid, make sure the worker safety laws are available, make sure that they can join a union.”

Minimum Wage Increase
If elected president, Obama has said he will raise the minimum wage, something he often prefers to call a “living wage,” to $9.50 an hour by 2011 and index it to inflation. He has repeatedly championed minimum wage increases.

“We shouldn't raise the minimum wage every 10 years,” Obama told a Wisconsin crowd during the primary season. “We should raise it every year to keep up with inflation. If you work in this country, you should not be poor.”

In his August speech at the Democratic National Convention, vice presidential nominee Joe Biden chided McCain, his longtime Senate colleague, for voting against Democratic-led minimum wage hikes a total of 19 times. In truth, McCain’s Senatorial career is peppered with various positive votes in favor of a minimum wage increase, including one that would lift the figure to $7.25 per hour. As is common on Capitol Hill, some of his votes for or against the minimum wage were tucked inside other bills, such as a 2007 one on war funding.

In general, McCain has supported minimum wage hikes, just at a more modest rate than his colleagues to the left. In 2007, he joined 27 other Republicans in voting—unsuccessfully—to allow individual States the rights and flexibility to determine minimum wage. The Arizona Senator has frequently said his rejection to a more robust minimum wage increase arrives from his concern that it would boost employers’ labor costs and thereby limit the creation of new jobs.

Paid Sick Leave
While up to 46 million American workers do not receive paid sick days, legislators in a dozen states have proposed laws requiring employers to provide them. Current federal legislation, called the Healthy Families Acts, remains on the table that would require businesses to provide seven paid sick days each year to employees who work at least 30 hours a week. Obama has touted his support for such legislation while McCain, true to his form of opposing federal mandates, has said such rules further stifle employers, particularly during challenging economic times.

Restaurant Depreciation
While depreciation schedules for restaurants have remained rather consistent over recent years, the NRA continues to work for a depreciation schedule that would fall to 15 years from the current 39 ½ year threshold. In April, Maryland restaurant owner and NRA member Fred Rosenthal told a Congressional hearing that “shortening the write-off of restaurant buildings and improvements to 15 years would create immediate economic activity within the industry, which in turn would reverberate throughout the economy.”

Neither McCain nor Obama have clarified their positions on restaurant depreciation. Yet, McCain has said he would allow businesses to immediately expense the full cost of three- and five-year business equipment purchased between 2009 and 2013. After 2013, businesses would again have to depreciate equipment over time. His campaign, however, offered no further comment on the matter. Obama’s camp did not respond to QSR’s request for the Democratic nominee’s stance on the issue.