The Economist Recycles Old Right-Wing Ideas to Gut Public Protections
The Economist’s February 18 edition offers a cover package of five articles on “Over-regulated America” (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Our British friends want you to know there’s a problem here in the States that needs fixing:
A study for the Small Business Administration, a government body, found that regulations in general add $10,585 in costs per employee. It’s a wonder the jobless rate isn’t even higher than it is.
You can almost feel The Economist’s pain: the jobless rate should be a lot higher than it is, if the premise about the costs of regulations is correct. Surely if the regulatory burden were actually 12 percent of GDP – that’s what the SBA numbers say, if you draw them out – things would be far worse than they are. Ideologically unable to consider the obvious alternative – that regulations don’t add $10,585 in costs per employee, The Economist, just, well, “wonders” aloud.
Here’s what The Economist would have found if they’d dug just a little bit: Fully 70 percent of the SBA estimate was actually based on a regression analysis using opinion polling data on perceived regulatory climate across countries (in …
Political scientists have coined the term “bureaucracy bashing” to connote the temptation now rife among national politicians to beat up on the civil service for reasons that have nothing to do with reality. Ronald Reagan pioneered this art form of disrespecting bureaucrats in the name of downsizing government, even as federal deficit spending on government programs he favored grew to epic proportions. Ironically, President Obama has lifted the same hammer in an altogether unsuccessful effort to placate the conservative critics who claim the Reagan mantle. His efforts to pal around with the right-wing are unlikely to win him many friends, and risk undermining the credibility of the government he so badly wants to lead into a second term.
The most recent example of the President’s penchant for bureaucracy bashing was the State of the Union’s “spilled milk” joke, which went over like a lead balloon …
The White House announced Tuesday a legislative agenda it is sending Congress as part of its Startup America initiative to foster the growth of new businesses.
The White House was under some pressure to do wrong here: the President’s “Jobs Council” – a group mostly of CEOs – issued a report last month that included a perhaps unsurprising pile of old anti-regulatory proposals. And Senators Mark Warner and Jerry Moran were pushing the White House to endorse their bill, the Startup Act, which includes anti-regulatory measures that would weaken our existing environmental, health, and safety laws.
But here’s a bit of good news: the White House didn’t include any anti-regulation measures in the Startup America legislative agenda. The document gives just a polite nod to Warner-Moran:
The Administration looks forward to working with sponsors of similar initiatives including S. 1965 (Warner-Moran), S. 1866 (Coons-Rubio), S. 1544 …
In its public meeting records, the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) frequently misspells the names or affiliations of the attendees. Senator Jon Kyl was once listed as “Sen. Rul.” And John Ikerd, affiliated with the University of Missouri (MO) and the Sierra Club, was listed as “John Ikend, University of MD/Siemen Club.”
Sometimes the misspelled names or affiliations are easy to figure out; other times they aren’t (see page 77 of our OIRA white paper from November for more examples). The public is supposed to be able to tell who these people are – that’s the whole point, transparency.
The misspellings are troublesome, but a new OIRA meeting record I just noticed takes the cake for leaving the public uninformed:
Why list the affiliation of the attendees at all?!
The occasional typo is one thing, but when OIRA gets it …
A panel of business leaders comprising President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness today published a “Road Map to Renewal,” including proposals for expanded oil and gas drilling, and, of particular interest, five pages of policy recommendations related to regulation. Among them were procedural proposals aimed at further hamstringing regulatory agencies in their effort to promulgate badly needed safeguards for health, safety, and the environment.
For example, the Council proposes:
- lengthening the regulatory process by adding in an additional public-comment period so that commenters can comment on other commenters’ comments,
- requiring independent regulatory agencies be required by statute to conduct cost-benefit analyses of their regulations, presumably so that regulations that do not sufficiently benefit industry’s bottom line would be rejected, and
- creating a group of economists within regulatory agencies, separated in some fashion from the legal and scientific issue experts, who would pass judgment on …
It’s my great pleasure to announce that the Board of Directors of CPR has selected Jake Caldwell to serve as our new executive director. He succeeds Shana Jones, who earlier this year announced she would be leaving CPR to teach environmental policy at Old Dominion University.
Jake comes to CPR after six years at the Center for American Progress, where he was the Director of Policy for Agriculture, Trade and Energy. His research and writing in that capacity frequently focused on environmental issues, including climate change regulation, renewable energy financing, clean energy and conservation, biofuel production and more. From November 2008 to January 2009, Jake served as a member of President Obama’s Transition Team, in the Energy and Natural Resources Section of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agency Review. He has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Carey …
Senators Mark Warner (D-VA) and Jerry Moran (R-KS) introduced a bill earlier this month that proposes to change regulatory and tax policies with the goal of encouraging more entrepreneurial activity and creating more jobs. The legislation contains a grab-bag of proposals, such as allowing more aliens with professional expertise in stem cell research to become permanent residents and extending an income tax credit for certain small businesses. I can’t speak to the merits of these and other proposals in the bill with one exception. The legislation would codify the current requirement found in executive orders that federal agencies complete a cost-benefit analysis of proposed and final “major” rules. This idea may sound reasonable on its face, but ultimately it would hinder the ability of federal agencies to issue health and environmental safeguards, and provide no help to the economy.
As other CPR scholars and I have …
The Obama Administration is sending mixed messages.
On the one hand, several top economic officials have noted the extensive evidence that a lack of demand, rather than regulation, is the cause of a slow economic recovery and low job creation. Yet the President himself has contradicted his economic advisers on the issue in a misguided effort to pander to industry concerns, leaving the Administration’s message confused.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, hardly the most progressive force in the Administration, said in October: “I don’t think there's good evidence in support of the proposition that it's regulatory burden or uncertainty that's causing the economy to grow more slowly than any of us would like.” Jan Eberly, Treasury’s Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy, laid out a significant batch of evidence in support of Geithner’s argument in a subsequent blog post.
Austan Goolsbee, Chair …
On Tuesday, Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) introduced the Bipartisan Jobs Creation Act, legislation that offers a number of proposals for jump-starting the economy. The bill includes two provisions that would hobble the regulatory system without generating the new jobs that the Senators seek. If these provisions were enacted, the bill would block regulatory safeguards that protect all Americans and our environment. The bill’s regulatory provisions would make it harder for the EPA and other regulatory agencies to implement congressional legislation designed to clean up our air and water, make our food safer, and reduce avoidable workplace hazards.
The regulatory provisions in the Collins-McCaskill bill are a nod to Republicans’ specious claim that “excessive regulation” is holding back job growth. One provision would delay EPA’s rule limiting hazardous air pollutants from commercial and industrial boilers by 15 months, and prevent the agency …
Within the last hour, the House of Representatives approved the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act – the REINS Act. The bill was among House Republicans’ top priorities for the year, and they’ve made it and a series of other anti-regulatory bills a centerpiece of their agenda. The plain purpose of the REINS Act is to make it all but impossible for the nation’s regulatory agencies to adopt regulations that would enforce a host of protective laws, including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Occupational Safety and Health Act, and many others. The Act would permit Congress (in fact, just one House of Congress) to ignore these legislative mandates in deciding whether to approve regulations, opening the door for much greater politicization of the regulatory process. House Republicans have pursued it in part to prop up their disingenuous argument that regulation is …
