… to solve the problems created by the Obama administration and Obamacare. Back on Dec. 6 I wrote about the provision in Obamacare that might leave doctors and health care providers in a position where they are told a patient has coverage, but they end up not getting paid. Now, but Obama administration is pressuring insurance companies to pay for procedures and care even if no premiums have been paid.
Hat tip to Phineas at Sister Toldjah. In short, President Obama and the Democrats promised to look at and reduce overwhelming federal regulations, but they keep writing new ones every friggin’ day.
It continues. Here is another example of the federal government politicians and bureaucrats sticking their collective noses into the rights of the people and the state. Again, they’re threatening to hold back federal transportation dollars if states don’t capitulate to the demands of Washington, D.C.
Why, just tell me why, the federal government feels the need to inject themselves into this issue? Can’t the public pool management just have a simple conversation with the people or families who need access to the pool and work it out?
Remember earlier this year when the President told Americans that he had instructed his administration to review all regulations as he had discovered that excessive federal regulations actually hurt business, the economy, and jobs? On Tuesday of this week, the administration, through Cass Sunstein, from the White House Office of Management and Budget, proudly released the results of this in depth review.
To truly appreciate this momentous occasion, you first need to know that the Congressional Budget Office estimates that federal regulations cost the economy $1.75 trillion each year. Of course, you and I pay for that in the form of higher prices for virtually everything we purchase, and less employment as business is required to spend money on regulations, not employees.
Mr. Sunstein’s announcement will fix that. The administration, with Herculean effort, has gotten rid of regulations that will save business (I hope you are sitting down) $10 billion over 5 years. Feel better now?
If you don’t, you are not alone.
House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor (R. Va.) called this announcement, “underwhelming”.
But, before I end this post, I found this statistic in the last link interesting.
According to current estimates, taxpayers and businesses spend around 6 billion hours a year on tax compliance.
Six billion hours? Let’s see, there are 24 hours in a day…
That’s right. I’m putting this right at the feet of the president himself. A family in Missouri has been fined more than $90,000 by the US Department of Agriculture for selling more than $500 of the furry creatures in less than one year. The families profit was a whopping $200 for the year.
OK. A paraphrase. But even as the President stood before Chamber businesses … his little regulators were hard at work, well, regulating. The question is, has this President changed? Is really listening to business, or is he still pushing a command economy. State-ists, fear not. No change here. Read more
I must confess that I was a bit skeptical when the President, during the State of the Union Address, advised that he would instruct all federal agencies to review existing regulations to eliminate those that placed “unreasonable burdens on businesses”.
And, my skepticism wasn’t eased when, shortly thereafter, the EPA decided that dairy farmers needed to create and train hazmat teams to deal with the clear and present danger of spilled milk.
Now we learn that there are guidelines for this regulatory review.
‘While all significant regulations are subject to this process, it would stand to reason that any regulations promulgated by this administration are current and already reflect the principles outlined by the president,’ said Meg Reilly, a spokeswoman for the Office of Management and Budget. [emphasis supplied]
I’m sure that businesses throughout the country are now breathing a sigh of relief knowing that they will soon be rid of all those pesky, unreasonable, anti-business regulations promulgated under the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.
We did a post last week about President Obama’s new executive order concerning federal regulations. He has declared that all federal agencies review their regulations with an eye toward eliminating those that impose “unreasonable burdens on business–burdens that have a chilling effect on growth and jobs”.
He will, no doubt, tout this during his State of the Union address in an attempt to make us all think he is business friendly, and “moving toward the center”. When he does, you need to be aware of certain facts that render his statements, and the executive order, meaningless.
First, before his “epiphany”, Republicans had already drafted legislation seeking to accomplish the same thing, so, his executive order is merely window dressing to make us think he has moderated his philosophy. (More on the Republican legislation in a later post.)
Second, in the two years of his presidency, his administration has already passed “major regulations” (those with an effect on the economy of more than $100 million) totalling $40 billion. It took the Bush administration seven years to accomplish this “feat”, with one fourth of that amount coming in 2007 when the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. And, of course, we still have 2011 to look forward to with the costs of all of the regulations associated with Obamacare, the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act, the EPA’s continuing march toward Cap and Tax, the FCC’s decision to impose “net neutrality” (in spite of court orders holding they do not have Congressional authority to do so), the NLRB’s apparent desire to impose “card check” (in spite of Congress’s decision not to do so), the Department of Interior’s still to come regulations regarding off-shore drilling…to name just a few.
Third, buried in the fine print of Obama’s executive order, the agencies are directed, when weighing the costs and benefits of any regulation, to consider “values that are difficult or impossible to quantify, including equity, human dignity, fairness, and distributive impacts”.
With the inclusion of this language, you will be happy to learn that the EPA has already announced that,
it was ‘confident’ it wouldn’t need to alter a single current or pending rule. ‘In fact, the EPA’s rules consistently yield billions in cost savings that make them among the most cost-effective in the government.’
And, just in case you forgot, the EPA justified its carbon ‘endangerment” finding last year by saying that,
climate change will ‘add further stress to an existing host of social problems that cities experience, including neighborhood degradation, traffic congestion, crime, unemployment, poverty, and inequities in health and well-being.’ [And] it will ‘accentuate the disparities already evident in the American health care system, as many of the expected health effects are likely to fall disproportionately on the poor, the elderly, the disabled, and the uninsured.’
With a “thought” process like that, virtually any regulation will pass muster under this administration.
Moving to the center, I think not. The president’s executive order is merely a head fake.