How Excessive Regulations Cost Us

One of the main policy directions of the Obama Administration is to use their claimed (and in some cases real) executive authority to enact policy directions via regulations and executive fiat.  This happens particularly when the Administration has been unable to enact their preferred policy directions via their partnership with the Legislative branch of Government - the Congress.

Much of this comes from the Administration's approach towards 'compromise' and 'negotiation'.  We all remember the WH meeting between leaders of Congress and the President during the debate on Obamacare where the President callously reminded the minority Republican leaders of both the House and Senate, 'I Won'.  This was the first major example of the President's definition of 'compromise' - where the opposition much give up their position entirely and sign onto the President's position entirely before 'compromise' has been achieved.

From this, and the parliamentary shenanigans needed by the Senate Majority Leader, unable to leverage his initially 20 vote and ultimately 19 vote majority in the Senate, to ram Obamacare through the Senate and then onto to the President for signature sent a clear message to the Republicans and Americans that to this President and his supporters, the end's justifies the means.

After the actions of the Administration and Congressional Democrats, the people in November 2010 historically rebuked the agenda of the President.  However rather than lead as President Clinton did after a similar rebuke by triangulating and moving to the center, President Obama and the Senate Democrats continued on their full scale war on the American people and Republicans in Congress. 

The Senate, under Harry Reid,  along with the usual sycophants in the media, helped create the false meme of a 'do-nothing' 'Republican Congress' as the Senate Democrat leadership has buried nearly three dozen House bills by the Republicans to address the very real problems we have.  They've also failed, for nearly 1,000 days, to pass a federal budget - fighting tooth and nail to continue to spend more than $1.3 trillion dollars than the government brings in - primarily on expanding government via regulation.

George Will writing in today's Washington Post highlights one specific case, although there are likely thousands, where the agenda of this Administration and their drive to use regulations and executive fiat to enact that misguided agenda, result in massive damage to the US in terms of lost jobs, higher costs, and lost business opportunities.

Newsome says the study for deepening Savannah’s harbor was made in 1999. It is 2012, and studies for the environmental impact statement are not finished. When they are, the project will take five years to construct. “But before that,” he says laconically, “they’re going to be sued by groups concerned about the environmental impact.” A Newsome axiom — that institutions become risk-averse as they get challenged — is increasingly pertinent as America changes from a nation that celebrated getting things done to a nation that celebrates people and groups who prevent things from being done. . .

The Empire State Building was built in 14 months during the Depression, the Pentagon in 16 in wartime. The aircraft carrier USS Yorktown, which earned 11 battle stars in the Pacific and now is anchored here, was built in less than 17 months, back when America was serious about moving forward. Is it necessary to take eight years — just two years less than it took to build the Panama Canal with yellow fever and without computers — to deepen this harbor five feet?

These are valid questions that American voters have to ask. 

Why has it taken over a decade to rebuild Ground Zero after the terror attacks on 9/11?  Dozens of agencies were involved, each fighting for their own bureaucratic turf and agenda as opposed to focusing on the rebuilding of that ground.  In California, if one wants to open a new restaurant, one has to deal with nearly 30 different agencies and departments in a process that easily take over 18 months - yet in Texas, the same can be accomplished in only 6 weeks with far fewer bureaucratic hurdles to clear.

We're told that we don't have 'death panels' of government bureaucrats deciding life and death issues around healthcare, but then these same government bureaucrats decertify the FDA approval of a drug that prolongs life in many cancer cases because it is very expensive.  Or they decide that 50 is the better age to start regular breast detection mammograms over 40, and that those under 25 shouldn't be tested for cervical cancer - all not based on science but on costs.

We can't drill for oil within the US because of environmental regulations - and the strong left bias against drilling for oil inside the US, but we can spend $2 billion to get Brazil to do it - ignoring that Brazil will have far less reasonable oversight of the process.  The left has the meme that we use too much energy - and to support this meme, they do all they can to reduce the production of domestic energy and support policies to increase the cost of energy - achieving their goal via their policies to reform behavior even as this damages the US economy, costs us jobs, and makes the economic recovery far longer and shallower than it should be.

Sound familiar?  The leftist meme to increase the level of gun controls is being demanded by the supplies of US weaponry to the Mexican Drug Cartels who have murdered nearly 50,000 people in the last 5 years.  The problem with this?  Government bureaucrats, to support the case being presented, developed a program to supply guns to the cartels - creating the very case they are trying to address.  Hundreds of deaths resulted from this program, including 2 Americans, but the government bureaucrats are content to lie to Congress and cover-up their actions. 

The ends justifies the means to the Machiavellian mindset of today's liberal fascists.

This is why the election of 2012, and the defeat of this mindset, is imperative.