Obama Job Plan: Regulate America to Oblivion.

America is holding its breath in anticipation for President Obama’s big post-Labor Day jobs plan. September is when Congress is due back in session. It will be then the president will discuss regulations and their damaging effects on job creation. Wait. What? Are we supposed to forget the fact that President Obama has been our president over the last three years? And out of those three years, he had a super majority in Congress for two of them?

So then, what exactly is the regulation industry looking like these days? Booming is your answer.

If the federal government’s regulatory operation were a business, it would be one of the 50 biggest in the country in terms of revenues, and the third largest in terms of employees, with more people working for it than McDonald’s, Ford, Disney and Boeing combined.

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Meanwhile, employment at these agencies has climbed 13% since Obama took office to more than 281,000, while private-sector jobs shrank by 5.6% (Investor’s Business Daily).

We only need to turn back to last year and move forward to see how comical the president’s new found eagerness is on deregulation.

According to the Government Accountability Office, in 2010 no less than 43 major regulations were handed down by Washington lawmakers. The costs of the regulations were estimated at $26.5 billion. Regulating any part of the economy will have adverse affects on another. This is a known principle that applies everywhere because economics is only a measurement of reality and human behavior. When costs rise in one sector, they typically rise in other sectors brought on by inflation. For example, when regulations on energy production tighten, the cost on electricity goes up. Since everything imaginable requires electricity and fuel to produce, store, or transport; prices on totally separate and unconnected items like food to the car you buy will likewise go up. Hence the fitting term “hidden taxes” used to explain regulations — or to officially state it, a jump in the Consumer Price Index.

• The Small Business Association estimated that total regulatory costs amount to $1.75 trillion annually (SBA.gov).

Chief among the hardest hit has been the energy sector. Of the 43 regulations mentioned, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) enacted 10 of those. The total costs of just these ten equaled over $23 billion of the estimated $26 billion mentioned.

The Heritage Foundation pinpoints the costliest.

• Fuel economy and emission standards[6] for passenger cars, light-duty trucks, and medium-duty passenger vehicles imposed jointly by the EPA and NHTSA. Annual cost: $10.8 billion (for model years 2012 to 2016). For automakers to recover these increased outlays, NHTSA estimates the standards will lead to increases in average new vehicle prices ranging from $457 per vehicle in FY 2012 to $985 per vehicle in FY 2016.[7]
• Mandated quotas for renewable fuels. Annual cost: $7.8 billion (for 15 years). Utilizing farmland to grow corn and other crops used in renewable fuels will displace food crops, leading food costs to increase by $10 per person per year–or $40 for a family of four, according to the EPA.[8]
• Efficiency standards for residential water heaters, heating equipment, and pool heaters. Annual cost: $1.3 billion. The appliance upgrades necessary to comply with the new standards will raise the price of a typical gas storage water heater by $120.[9]
• Limits on “effluent” discharges from construction sites imposed by the EPA. Annual cost: $810.8 million. The cost of the requirements will force the closure of 147 construction firms and the loss of 7,257 jobs, according to the EPA. Homebuyers also will bear some of the costs, with an increase in mortgage costs of about $1,953.

Virginia Republican, Eric Cantor, recently wrote in the Washington Post about President Obama’s “anti-business, hyper-regulatory, pro-tax agenda.”

• Environmental Protection Agency regulations, including the “Transport Rule,” which could eliminate thousands of jobs, or the ozone regulation that would cost upward of $1 trillion and millions of jobs in the construction industry over the next decade.
• The administration’s new maximum achievable control technology standards for cement are expected to affect nearly 100 cement plants, setting over-the-top requirements resulting in increased costs and possibly thousands of jobs being offshored.
• The president’s silence as the National Labor Relations Board seeks to prevent Boeing from opening a plant in South Carolina that would create thousands of jobs.
• The president’s insistence on raising the top tax rate paid by individuals and small businesses, has resulted in a lag in growth that has added to the debt crisis, contributing to our nation’s credit downgrade.

The unemployment rate on Inauguration Day was at 7.3 percent. It now stands at over 9 percent, and our national debt has increased by 35 percent. All while Obama has had control over the levers and switches. One would think that by adding such costs to consumers and burdens to economic production, and seeing the negative consequences, the lessons from which should be painfully obvious. Moreover, with empirical data flashing across any business or labor website, the motivation to change course from ideological rigidness to that of laissez-faire economics would be too strong to resist.

Instead we get more of the same and a terrible example of how deep regulations can go when empowered government bureaucracies are allowed to regulate consumer and business out of existence. The Interagency Working Group on Food Marketed to Children (IWG) plans to regulate peanut butter and other food items deemed unfit and unmarketable for children.

This Interagency Working Group on Food Marketed to Children (IWG), comprised of the US Department of Agriculture, the Federal Trade Commission, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control, was charged by Congress with the task of studying the issue of childhood obesity and the marketing of foods to children and adolescents. It proposed “voluntary” guidelines now being considered that will undermine parental authority, place a so-called “voluntary” marketing ban on the marketing of numerous healthy foods like cereals and yogurts to children, and inflict economic harm on American consumers, American agriculture and the food industry, among many other sectors of the American economy.

So what is President Obama’s upcoming job plan going to do? Absolutely nothing. The damage has already been done.