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Townhall...
Obama’s Regulatory
Tsunami More Destructive than Taxes
By Lurita Doan
As Obama travels about the country, speaking of the need
for “shared sacrifice” and the need to increase taxes, he doesn’t
say a word about the tsunami of new Obama regulations ranging from
light bulbs to ozone pollution to painkillers to foreign travel to
vending machines that is about to hit America. Their impact will
be huge and do serious damage to our economy.
Obama’s regulatory tsunami began during his first month in office and
has continued relentlessly since. Each week, new, more intrusive
rules are rolled out, some through Executive Order, but many issued
from federal agencies, often without any fanfare or publicity. In
every month since his inauguration, President Obama has heaped
regulations on unsuspecting Americans, non-profit organizations, large
and small businesses.
You can argue that some of these new regulations are not destructive to
our economy, but just look at the number of regulations.
Their range, their grasp and their intrusiveness into American life is
staggering. And to think, several thousand new pages of new
regulatory guidelines and added bureaucracy are still being drafted by
the Obama Administration as required by healthcare, recovery act,
financial reform, small business and TARP legislation. These new
regulations will be piled atop the Mt. Everest pile of regulations
Obama has already produced.
January 2009-Housing Voucher regulations
February 2009-PLA (Project Labor Agreements) forcing government
contractors to provide bids that show union labor as a component.
March 2009-Stem Cell regulations
April 2009-Hedge Fund regulations
May 2009-EPA issues new fuel standards
June 2009-Regulations issued to influence Venture Capital activity
July 2009-EPA Training requirements for workers on building renovation
projects
August 2009-E-Rule (electronic rulemaking) regulation
September 2009-EPA issues ozone pollution regulations
October 2009-Greenhouse gas reporting requirements
November 2009-Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) regulations
December 2009-Natural Gas Pipeline safety regulations
January 2010-Visa regulations
February 2010-Organic Foods Program regulations
March 2010-Credit Card regulations
April 2010-Residential Water Heaters regulations
May 2010-Coal Ash regulations
June 2010-Truth in Lending regulations
July 2010-Revised ADA regulations
August 2010-Bedbugs and Pesticide regulations
September 2010-Portland Cement regulations
October 2010-Truck regulations
November 2010-Perfume / Fragrance regulations
December 2010-CAFE standards, MPG regulations
January 2011-New Cuba Travel regulations
February 2011-”Conscience protection” rules for health care providers
March 2011-Menu and Vending machine rules issued
April 2011-Tougher Painkiller regulations
This ubiquitous level of federal governmental involvement in almost
every aspect of the lives of American citizens seems anti-Democratic
and certainly anti-liberty. Worse, Obama’s regulatory activities
reek of a know-it-all, know-better-than-you kind of attitude that’s
un-American and certainly hostile to the laissez-faire kinds of
policies that, in the past, spurred our nation to grow. Obama is
championing an unabashed and rather dramatic new growth in government’s
influence and control over virtually every aspect of our lives.
Regulatory reform is desperately needed in the federal
government. For example,it takes some 7 years for the federal
government to construct a new building because of the difficulty
navigating all the time-consuming and expensive regulations. An
astute leader would be willing to reduce the stifling bureaucratic
process and regulatory regime that throttles all infrastructure
projects in the US. In this way, projects could hire builders and
construction teams more quickly; projects would be completed faster, at
less cost too. But that is not what Obama does.
Instead, in January 2011, after a mind-boggling two years of ever
greater strangulation of the economy through regulation, Obama does lip
service to the idea of regulatory reform and calls for a top-down
review of all federal regulations to determine which, if any, need to
be reformed. And then, in typical, hypocritical,
Obama-contradictory fashion, he delivers a State of the Union Address a
week later that adds no less than a dozen, new regulations that he
wants to impose on Americans.
The Obama Administration does not seem to understand that federal
regulations have a cost, both in implementing and reporting as well as
a cost in lost opportunity. Many of these regulations are
shrouded in smugness and imply that the regulations are intended to
make us into better people-- and that somehow those in the Obama
Administration know what criteria are important to make us better
people. Unbelievable!
Innovation, competitiveness, job creation and economic growth have
traditionally been the hallmark of our great nation. But the effect of
these new, governmental regulations will throttle those once uniquely
American virtues. Permanently higher unemployment, less rapid
business creation leading to far less innovation will be the
result. Our economy is going to continue to be smothered,
and small businesses will continue to be strangled until a new, and
more capable, national leader emerges to roll back the self-imposed
regulatory destruction that Obama has unleashed.
On the other hand, for any company that manufactures red tape, this is
going to be a bumper year.
Read it with links at Townhall
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