GE's Immelt says US must trim regulations to spur job growth

WASHINGTON: The US government must reduce business regulation to spur job growth, said Jeffrey Immelt, chief executive officer of General Electric Co and head of President Barack Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

"The one thing I hope to get done is to create more jobs," Immelt said in an interview on CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS". "There's got to be some simplification of regulations." Immelt, named to the council in January to build a bridge between the government and the country's employers, said industrywide jobs proposals will be ready by the end of this year. Americans' pessimism about the economy has deepened, sending Obama's approval ratings to the lowest of his presidency, as the stagnant labor market limits consumer spending and threatens to trigger another recession.

One way to boost confidence among employers is to "try to see through the eyes of small businesses," which face a bigger hurdle than large companies such as GE, IBM and JPMorgan, Immelt said.

"We're big enough companies that we can muscle through regulatory" pressures, he said. "We can comply. We can do the things we need to do."

"If you're a $50 million business, it's just so much harder," he said. Seen from his perspective, small business "has all the problems GE has, only on steroids."