In an apparent pro-business pivot, President Barack Obama promised Tuesday in a Wall Street Journal editorial eliminate those “dumb” and “outdated” regulatory regimes that hinder the nation’s economic growth.
“Regulations do have costs; often, as a country, we have to make tough decisions about whether those costs are necessary,” the president wrote. “But what is clear is that we can strike the right balance. We can make our economy stronger and more competitive, while meeting our fundamental responsibilities to one another.”
The president cemented his regulatory overture in a supplementary executive order and memorandum nudging the bureaucratic structure to soften those onerous regulations that “stifle job creation.” Enumerating the utility of a responsible regulatory system, the president’s order calls for a regulatory system in which a balance is stuck between the protection of public health and welfare and the promotion of economic growth and innovation.
But that caveat — that the Administration’s regulatory czars must use the least burdensome tools available — has ruffled the feathers of some progressive pro-regulatory organizations, who have already begun lobbying agency heads to ensure the order has minimal impact.
The groups will no doubt be busy, stirring dozens of regulatory pots: Coal, biomass, health care, education, Net neutrality, and card check. For a glimpse into havoc these groups have already wrought, BIG GOVERNMENT has laid out below those industries most affected by their iron-fisted regulatory regimes.
Net neutrality: Though 55 percent of voters disapprove of the Federal Communications Commissions (FCC) adopting Net neutrality and the projections that the measure will cost thousands of jobs and reduce the gross domestic product by $80 billion, Democrats forged onward with their plan to regulate the Internet. Days before Christmas, after the president and Congress had left the Capitol, the FCC voted along party-lines to enforce its proposed Net neutrality rules.
Already rebuffed by the courts in its previous efforts to extend its regulatory oversight into the realm of the Internet, some have said the FCC’s Net neutrality “power grab” is more egregious than the president’s health care reforms.
House Republicans recently introduced legislation to deny the FCC its new regulatory role and said to be considering invoking the Congressional Review Act.
Health care: The president’s health care overhaul carved out unchecked bureaucratic powers for a group of fifteen presidential appointees whose recommendations for Medicare cuts become automatic law, without the meaningful consultation of Congress.
On January 15 of each calendar year, the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) submits a proposal to the president and Congress on means to bend the Medicare cost curve down. That day, the majority leaders in both chambers must introduce legislation incorporating the board’s recommendations. Lawmakers’ hands are largely bound in the process, as the law mandates only legislation that meets the board’s budgetary recommendations may be considered.
In four months time, those committees with jurisdiction over the bill must complete their consideration of the proposal. Those committees who fail to meet the deadline are prevented from further consideration of the measure.
By August 15, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) must begin implementing the board’s proposal, as passed by Congress and approved by the president. If Congress has not yet passed legislation incorporating the the board’s recommendations, the original IPAB proposal becomes the law of the land.
Education: The Government Accountability Office released a report in August in which it accused the for-profit education industry of recruitment abuses; it was unveiled at a highly publicized and equally politicized Senate hearing. For its sensationalism, it became the bludgeon bureaucrats in the Department of Education used against career colleges in their campaign to redesign the loan repayment system.
After the Dept. of Ed. had already proposed a new “gainful employment” restriction on federal loan monies available to students of for-profit institutions, GAO revised its findings. A comparison of the modified and original versions by BIG GOVERNMENT revealed at least 13 key passages had been significantly altered.
In December, incoming House Oversight Committee chair Rep. Darrell Issa named the GAO’s report on for-profits among his first oversight targets.
Card check: Last week, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) threatened legal action against four states for amending their constitutions to guarantee for secret ballot elections. Labor unions have campaigned for years to eliminate the measure — veiled in legislation known as the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) — but the NLRB’s recent actions suggest the measure may be implemented via regulatory fiat.
Though exercising the secret ballot is the nation’s “core democratic right,” an “administrative agency voluntarily decided to advocate against its defense,” an open letter, sent Thursday by the Workforce Fairness Institute to the NLRB, reads.
Invoking the president’s recent words on regulation, WFI continued: “Being that a number of the sitting members of the NLRB were nominated by President Obama, it would make sense they heed his words … Today, the National Labor Relations Board is not ‘strik[ing] the right balance.’ Instead, your agency is advocating for positions that have a ‘chilling effect on growth and jobs.'”
Biomass: Over the course of the next several years, the EPA plans begin enforcing the so-called “Tailoring Rule” a regulatory scheme that amounts to a back-door Cap-and-Trade bill, effectively limiting the amount of greenhouse gases released by a number of American industries that the EPA considers “heavy polluters.” Done apart from Congress, the EPA’s actions could cost thousands of jobs, including a number of “green jobs” the administration claims to champion.
According to a study done by the National Alliance of Forest Owners, the EPA regulations could cost Americans between 11,000 and 25,000 jobs in a single industry alone, biomass. A report from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee estimated Americans could lose nearly one million jobs by the time the entire regulatory scheme was in place. The EPA has agreed to review the rule’s proposed standards on biomass, but no job-saving outcome is guaranteed, and the rest of the scheme remains in place.
Coal: The EPA has also been using backdoor methods to impose regulations on coal. Just a week ago, the EPA revoked a permit issued three years ago for a coal mine in West Virginia, bringing mining there to a standstill under the guise of the Clean Water Act. The action has businesses in West Virginia running scared; the closure will cost West Virginia hundreds of jobs and millions in investment, not to mention the EPA took action only after the mine spent nearly a decade and $250 million bringing the mine up to the EPA’s stringent standards. Not to mention, as the Examiner points out, it’s not entirely clear the EPA has the authority to revoke permits once issued, though that seems to be of little concern to the administration, or it’s darling EPA head Lisa Jackson.
Oil and gas: The National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling recently offered the official report on last summer’s Gulf oil spill, identifying nine key decision-making errors BP made regarding the failed Deepwater Horizon rig. As Investor’s Business Daily points out, however, the commission failed to notice any difference between BP and the rest of the offshore drilling industry, blaming the entire industry, whose decades of drilling and thousands of wells never produced a single mishap even remotely close to that of BP’s.
Ignoring the lengthy record of safely completely, the Obama administration seems to have used BP’s Gulf disaster to end offshore drilling in the Gulf altogether. The Wall Street Journal points out that, although the official moratorium on offshore drilling ended months ago, the Administration has issued only two new permits, a decline of 88% from the historical average. The Energy Information Administration estimates this back-door regulatory initiative could cost the US almost a quarter million barrels of oil per day.