Interview with Andrew Puzder, CEO of CKE Restaurants (Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s)
You may not have heard of Andy Puzder, but chances are you’ve eaten his food. Puzder is the CEO of CKE Restaurants, the parent company of more than 3,000 Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. restaurants across America and 20 other countries. Among other things, Andy Pudzer is an expert on jobs. The company he oversees has created 72,000 of them. With a payroll that vast, Pudzer has some insights into the country’s unemployment rate, and the effect of government regulation on it. He came to Washington recently, where he sat down with The Daily Caller’s Ginni Thomas to talk private sector job creation.
How do state policies impact private job creation and prosperity?
“We need to protect people more than we need to protect salamanders.”
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On true business-friendly policies
“First of all, you’d want to lower taxes, and you’d want to make taxes fairer.”
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Why the government and the private sector speak different languages
“If you think about the last time you got a driver’s license, that’s how the government runs businesses.”
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Why has the business community failed to stop the growth of government?
“Over the last two or three years, those obstacles have started to become insurmountable, so now that businesses are saying, ‘I don’t know that we can overcome this next obstacle.’
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Has business benefited from the Tea Party movement?
“It’s something I might support — its not the kind of thing I would get involved in.”
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On the Obama administration’s policies vs. job creation
“As opposed to creating jobs, you’re worried about your taxes, your health care costs, your labor costs, your energy costs, your food costs and I’m not even getting into ethanol subsidies.”
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Are we becoming an Atlas Shrugged society?
“The business community is willing to move and is always willing to overcome obstacles. I think government needs to understand that it’s time to remove some of those obstacles so people have a little more freedom.”
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