CEOs bemoan Washington “divisiveness” at UTA business school

Millennials face a more challenging business world in the years ahead and the United States needs political leaders willing to address and solve problems to keep the country on top, three North Texas business leaders said Monday night.

“I think it’s a real problem, just the divisiveness in Washington,” said Matthew Rose, Executive Chairman of Fort Worth-based BNSF Railway, referring to political gridlock between Republicans and Democrats. “Where Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are running to will create a lot more chaos.”

While many point to President Obama for failing to bring the country together, Rose said it’s really the Congress “that has failed, in its divisiveness up there, to pass policies that will take us out of this mess.”

“I see nothing in the political scene that says we’re not headed into another period of rancor and lack of willingness to get things done,” he said.

Rose was joined by Thomas Falk, chairman and chief executive of Irving-based Kimberly-Clark, and Robert Kaplan, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, at the University of Texas at Arlington College of Business Executive Dinner, in recognition of the business school’s 50th anniversary.

Falk said it may not matter who wins the presidency this year “because our system right now seems to be functioning in a way that guarantees that nothing will happen. We can’t seem to get basic jobs in government done.”

Rose and Kaplan spoke of the need to increase investments in areas including education and infrastructure, and to allow for immigration policies that continue to allow foreigners to come to the U.S. and pursue the American dream.

All three discussed how new technologies are disrupting industries and reshaping how people do their jobs, presenting a more challenging path to success for so-called millennials, the generation born in the 1980s and 1990s.

“I’d say they’re going to have it harder than we did. They’re more likely to get fired. They’re more likely to fire someone else. They’re more likely to have setbacks,’ said Kaplan, a former Goldman Sachs executive who was a professor at Harvard Business School before coming to the Dallas Fed last year.

“The world is going to be a more testing place,” Kaplan said.

This story was originally published April 5, 2016 at 11:03 AM with the headline "CEOs bemoan Washington “divisiveness” at UTA business school."