The president is no deregulator
David Harsanyi
Reason.com
1/19/2011
President Barack Obama penned a witty Wall Street Journal op-ed this week, titled “Toward a 21st-Century Regulatory System.”
In it, he extolled the virtues of a free market system. And to prove that his admiration of capitalism has nothing to do with naked political expediency, Obama signed an executive order that will “root out regulations that conflict, that are not worth the cost, or that are just plain dumb.”
Sounds rather subjective, though, don’t you think? How do we gauge excessive regulation in the Age of Obama? I can’t recall a single federal program, piece of legislation, or proposal in the past two years that was initiated to ease the burden on consumers or businesses. (If you know of any, please send specifics to sorry@dowelooklikesuckers.com.)
Obama doesn’t have to look far, if he’s serious. Nor does he need an executive order. Right now, the Environmental Protection Agency is drafting carbon rules to force on states, even though a similarly torturous 2,000 pages on a cap-and-trade scheme intending to make power more expensive was rejected. Maybe there’s something in that pile of paper to mine.
Also, the Federal Communications Commission is shoving network neutrality in the pipeline—again, bypassing Congress—so government can regulate the Internet for the first time in history, though the commissioners themselves admit that as of now, any need for rules are based on the what-ifs of their imaginations.
There exists no legislation more burdensome and expensive than the job-crushing (not “job-killing,” because, naturally, we can’t stand for that kind of imagery) Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, formerly known as ObamaCare and presently being symbolically repealed by House Republicans.
That’s for starters…
The article continues at Reason.com
