From the UL:
President Obama has threatened to veto a bill that would require federal regulations to be cost-effective and receive more public input. He said it would be too burdensome on the federal government. This is not a story from the satirical news site “The Onion.” The House passed the Regulatory Accountability Act last week
The Hill had more – the irony abounds:
“The Regulatory Accountability Act would impose unprecedented and unnecessary procedural requirements on agencies that would prevent them from efficiently performing their statutory responsibilities,” the White House said late Monday in a policy statement. “It would also create needless regulatory and legal uncertainty and further impede the implementation of protections for the American public.”
Well, golly – make businesses obey government regulations that have been imposed unprecedented and unnecessary procedural requires on them prevent them from efficiently performing their fiduciary and legal responsibilities to their owners as well as providing economically available goods and services for the American public – isn’t this the same case? And Obama refuses to see the parallel? Or is this the same stubbornness and opaqueness of the Obama Administration shown by his Chief of Staff Denis McDonough’s refusal to answer Chris Wallace’s (and Steve’s favorite) question of “how much tax from the rich is enough”?
The Regulatory Accountability Act of 2015, reintroduced last week by Reps. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), failed to gain traction in the last Congress but stands a better chance this time around with Republicans in control of both chambers. “Today, Americans face a burden of over $3 trillion from federal taxation and regulation,” Goodlatte said when he introduced the bill. “In fact, our federal regulatory burden is larger than the 2013 Gross Domestic Product of all but the top ten countries in the world and most importantly, that burden adds up to $15,000 per American household, nearly thirty percent of average household income in 2013,” he added.
…But the White House said the legislation would actually increase costs. “This bill would make the regulatory process more expensive, less flexible, and more burdensome — dramatically increasing the cost of regulation for the American taxpayer and working class families,” the White House wrote.
I’m not thinking that the Federal Government’s regulations are all that flexible at all: you do it our way. Period. Especially with this Administration. If it SLOWS the process down, that’s GREAT! But the kicker is, if it ALREADY is too expensive (see above, $15K/household), why is the Government looking to REDUCE the cost to the public upon application rather than whining that Government is doing this to Government? Haven’t they already lost that case when legislation has to be passed to LOWER the cost of regulation on the public?
The Regulatory Accountability Act would also limit the guidance and interim final rules federal agencies can issue, and require them to be more open about the data they use to justify regulations. Federal agencies would be required to hold public hearings for the most expensive rules, something many agencies already do. The regulations could also be challenged in court before they are finalized. Republicans say those steps would lead to more moderate regulations, but opponents of the bill argue it would water down the rule making process and “sabotage” public protections.
Just as the Constitution, when applied correctly (and it is debatable that it is), constrains Government from acting, this should do the same for the Administrative State.
Katie Weatherford, a regulatory policy analyst at the left-leaning Center for Effective Government, said the legislation is “nothing more than a backdoor effort to undermine public protections.” “The Regulatory Accountability Act would add numerous hurdles and delays to agency efforts to develop new safeguards and give big business even more opportunities to interfere in this process,” she wrote.
You know, Government ALWAYS brings that up as if THEY are the only ones looking out for the public. What they don’t realize is that we know it isn’t true – EVERY thing in government (for I can think of very few examples) has been politically weaponized for one special interest or another; it isn’t so much “protection” but “pay back” (or pay off – like many of the EPA regulations are nothing more than the watermelon environmentalists’ wet dream nostrums whose aims are to de-industrialize us and “return GAIA to its wild state” unvarnished and untouched by human hands and bad breath.
The UL’s post ends well on this note:
When there are too few restraints on the state, restraints on the people multiply — which is why this President wants so few restraints on the state.
(H/T: The Hill via Union Leader)
