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Townhall...
More Regulations Are
Not a Plan for Job Creation
By James Lankford
6/16/2011
There must be something in the water coolers on the other side of the
aisle. Earlier this year, at an Oversight and Government Reform
Committee hearing concerning reducing regulations, a Democrat colleague
expressed his “concern” over reducing the regulation on business and
stated boldly that increased regulation on businesses creates jobs in
America. According to his logic, more regulation creates more
requirements for businesses to hire compliance officers to oversee the
regulations imposed upon them by government; therefore the government
creates more jobs. At first, I thought he was joking, but he was
serious. I later asked the witnesses at the hearing if they would
rather hire more employees that produce goods and services or hire more
compliance officers. You can well imagine their response.
In my home state of Oklahoma, we are dealing with the Environmental
Protection Agency changing their rules and again demanding millions of
dollars for new modifications for power generating facilities. I am
certain that these compliance jobs will be called “green jobs” by
Washington when they are hired and when more Oklahoma capital is
wasted. Even worse, our state put forth a sound plan to address all the
new EPA guidelines, but that plan was rejected by the EPA in favor of a
plan that only makes sense to Washington. Arecently released study
shows that the EPA’s new “clean-air rules” placed on utilities will
increase costs by $17.8 billion annually and raise electricity rates
for consumers by 11.8%. Those same rules forced the closing or partial
closing of eleven power plants of an Ohio-based power company.
Thanks to additional regulations, rates will go up again.
Realizing all these burdens will hurt the economy and drive up costs
for consumers, the EPA is attempting to sell its work as a jobs agenda
by echoing that same “regulations creates jobs” theme. Monday’s Wall
Street Journal editorial had this quote from EPA administrator Lisa
Jackson that highlights the agency’s thoughts. She said a new rule was
“‘expected to create jobs,’ because it will ‘increase demand for
pollution control technology.’” Apparently, government regulators and
compliance officers are “green jobs.”
Ever expanding regulatory burdens on traditional energy producers only
hurt the economy by increasing prices for the consumers, pushing
companies out of business and bogging down the industry. The EPA
counters that these jobs are being replaced by those same “green
energy” jobs, but as Politico reported, this new green economy is not
coming along as fast as the President had hoped. It is not difficult to
figure out why. These new forms of energy are not yet viable, and they
will not be for years to come. In the end, the EPA is only reshuffling
jobs, not creating new jobs, and their irrational pace of regulation is
driving up the cost of energy.
When will we understand that stable regulations allow traditional
energy to thrive? Consistent rules allow energy companies to put more
money into research and development, which, in turn, create more jobs,
including future alternative energy jobs. If we give the private sector
more freedom to develop the most efficient sources of energy, everyone
wins; consumers will pay less, companies will grow (which means they
will hire more people) and our economy will be stronger. Maybe it’s
time for the EPA to start testing the water in their own coolers.
Read it at Townhall
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