Rhetoric vs. Reality from the Obama Administration on Regulations
President Obama published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this morning claiming that his Administration would take a new look at imposing new regulations. While it’s welcome to hear the President admit that “sometimes [federal] rules have gotten out of balance, placing unreasonable burdens on business—burdens that have stifled innovation and have had a chilling effect on growth and jobs,” it would be far more productive for the Administration to put its actions where its rhetoric lies when it comes to imposing new burdens on business.
Between March 22 and December 31, the Federal Register contained a whopping 6,123 pages of requirements related to the health care law – proposed rules, interim final rules, requests for information, notices, and other regulatory actions. These regulations included provisions that will result in more than half of all employers – and up to 80% of small businesses – losing access to their current health plan, and other new mandates that will raise insurance premiums for all Americans.
Worse yet, the regulatory impact of the health care law has only just begun – most of the law’s major provisions don’t even start until 2014. That means that over the coming years (more likely decades), businesses and individuals will have to comply with tens of thousands of pages of new (and changing) regulations imposed by federal bureaucrats. These mandates will come on top of all those included in the 2,700 page health care law itself.
Moreover, the regulatory process under which health care regulations have been propounded violates the President’s stated commitment in his op-ed to achieve “more input from experts, businesses, and ordinary citizens.” At least 11 rules have taken effect – giving them the force of law – WITHOUT public comment in advance, shutting small businesses and ordinary Americans out of the rulemaking process. And most recently, the Administration was forced to withdraw controversial regulations surrounding end-of-life care, after leaked e-mails suggested that Democrats deliberately sought to enact regulatory provisions without providing the public an opportunity to comment on them. (The White House still has yet to provide a full and public accounting of who or what was behind this highly unusual turn of events.)
The tone of the President’s op-ed this morning about a common sense way to apply regulation was welcome, and needed. However, this Administration’s regulatory overreach – and the closed-door method in which federal bureaucrats have often shut the American public out of the process – is not.