CBJ: What is the most important thing the government has done lately that gives you the sense that it is getting the message?

DiMicco: I think there has been a realization on the part of the administration that the thing they need to be focused on as the highest priority is jobs, jobs, jobs. But they were late to the game. And I’ve told this to the president. And I’ve told this to numerous dozens of senators of both parties. As a business, you might have a strategy. And you’ve built that strategy in anticipation of what the future is. But if all of a sudden your world changes overnight, you have to immediately stop what you’re doing, reevaluate your strategy, and make sure you are focusing on the most important issues first.

And some of the things that have been going on in Washington should not have been going on at this point in time.

That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have gotten around to them. But our crisis was the recovery. And the crisis of this administration was the recovery. And for the business community, the crisis was the recovery and creating jobs. Because we’ve lost so many jobs. Tens of millions of jobs.

CBJ: How do you think you have been able to make this point?

DiMicco: First thing, I had the good fortune to have lunch with the president. And I must tell you the president was very cordial and a listener. That’s going back into the fall of last year. And also, I’ve been able to be part of the jobs summit that took place last year and Vice President Biden’s manufacturing and the middle-class summit for how we revive manufacturing in this country. And they are good listeners. And they’re paying attention.

I think, in hindsight, they do believe the jobs situation is not going the way any of us hoped it would and that stronger measures needed to be taken sooner than they were taken. I’m not saying they wouldn’t have worked on health care or what people refer to as this man-made global warming. But I think that at some point in time, most people say, “Listen, those things could have been taken care of after we worked on the recovery, the recovery, the recovery and jobs, jobs, jobs.”

CBJ: How has that impacted business and the recovery?

DiMicco: I think that all that happened is that most industry business leaders have been sitting on their hands because of the uncertainties about what’s going to happen with cost structures, whether it be from an energy standpoint, a carbon standpoint, a health care standpoint. When what we really needed to be focusing on is getting the credit facilities working again, the banks working again, loaning money again, and us going out and making jobs again. But nobody’s going to go out and create jobs if they’re uncertain about the future, because they’re uncertain whether they can get the returns that justify the borrowing or the investment.

To create jobs today, you need to create an environment where there’s a high degree of confidence that the right things are being done by our government to support a recovery, as opposed to raising the risk factors in our minds of stimulating a recovery.

CBJ: How much of an impact have you seen at Nucor from the president’s $787 billion stimulus package?

DiMicco: [DiMicco makes a circle with his thumb and forefinger and thrusts his hand in the air.] Zero. It kept some people working at the state level and what have you, teachers and police and government employees. But only about $60 billion was spending for infrastructure, less than 8 percent of the stimulus.

Cash for Clunkers helped maybe on a short-term basis. But we need real investments. The crisis gives us an opportunity to refocus on things that matter. Energy independence. Drilling responsibly for oil and gas. Use all our natural resources. Renewables, nuclear, coal. And deal with the waste issues.

What does that do for you? That cuts the trade deficit by more than half. It builds national security up. It gets our budgets under control, our deficits under control.

We don’t need the government using the money. We need the private sector using the money. That is where we have to put our energy for the next 10 years. That is how long it is going to take to get ourselves out of this situation. We need to create investment in the private sector, and that means getting the costs structure for doing business back in line. That means doing the right things. We have to get our house in order.

CBJ: Turning to Nucor specifically, have you been able to stand by the company’s policy of not laying people off?

DiMicco: We have not laid any of our employees off. And there’s a big cost to following that practice like we have for 45 years or more. But there’s a big benefit too. And the benefit outweighs the cost. All our employees are still getting full benefits, including tuition, scholarships for their children to go to college or vo-tech schools. That includes reimbursement for the employees to go to college themselves.

And our people have a place to come every day. They’re making a solid contribution, helping us be better prepared for the upturn when it comes. They’re still employed. We haven’t gone to the government and said, “You need to supplement their income with taxpayer dollars.” We are taking care of that.

But they fall into that huge classification of underemployed. They’ve been hurt. They’re making 40 percent less money than they were a year before all this happened. And you try to live on 40 percent less income.

Why hasn’t the government been cut? The government is getting raises. The senators are getting raises. It’s absurd.

They should be putting all the government employees on reduced workweeks. They should have a no-layoff practice, but they should have to experience some of the pain that their fellow Americans are experiencing in the private sector. They’re the ones that pay the damn salaries for the folks in government, whether it be state or federal.

It’s OK for everybody to be sharing this pain. Including the Wall Street guys who get these huge bonuses, which is obscene and a shame on everybody.

CBJ: Do you have employees leaving because they are not getting the full-time hours?