President Obama Issues Executive Order On Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review

Businesswire.com ran an article today praising the order as a much needed help to lift the burden of government regulations on small business owners. In this article, The Chief Counsel for Advocacy of the Small Business Association, (SBA) Winslow Sargeant is quoted as stating:

“I applaud President Obama’s efforts today to reduce excessive and unjustified regulatory burdens on small business,” said Sargeant. “The Office of Advocacy looks forward to continuing to work closely with federal agencies and small business to design cost-effective, evidence-based regulations that are compatible with economic growth, job creation, and competitiveness.”

The fact is that Mr. Winslow also happens to be an Obama appointee. While that certainly doesn’t disqualify him from serving in the appointed position, one has to question the validity of the above statement.

When making such heady statements as to lifting unjustified regulatory burdens on small business, we have to consider what has transpired over the last two years. The vaunted healthcare bill has already had such negative effects on small businesses, that over 200 waivers had to be given out to allow those businesses to keep on offering their employees Health insurance. And there are many more in line for those waivers. Where was Mr. Winslow on this major issue?

Then there is the Food Safety bill that was passed through Congress, then deemed illegal, then basically slammed back through the Senate with more trickery than a magic show. This bill will force small farmers out of business through new regulations and paperwork . Monsanto spent millions and millions lobbying for this bill, and (unless you consider them a small business), the small farmers were left out of the discussion on the ramifications to them when this bill passed. Where was Mr. Winslow when this destructive legislation was being walked through our Congress by the big special interest groups ?

Mr. Obama is so proud of this executive order that he wrote an Op-Ed in The Wall Street Journal.

In it, he makes several interesting points. First is this one:

“The EPA and the Department of Transportation worked with auto makers, labor unions, states like California, and environmental advocates this past spring to turn a tangle of rules into one aggressive new standard. It was a victory for car companies that wanted regulatory certainty; for consumers who will pay less at the pump; for our security, as we save 1.8 billion barrels of oil; and for the environment as we reduce pollution. Another example: Tomorrow the FDA will lay out a new effort to improve the process for approving medical devices, to keep patients safer while getting innovative and life-saving products to market faster.”

Apparently Mr. Obama hasn’t had to pay to fill up his vehicle with fuel lately. Gasoline is now averaging $3.22 a gallon. The U.S. Energy Information Administration said Tuesday that there is a slim chance national average gasoline prices could spike over $4 a gallon in September and an even better chance that average prices could run over $3.50 a gallon in the summer. During this time of economic recession, with unemployment still over 9% for the longest period since WWII, we have crippling fuel prices. Looks like the EPA, Unions and environmental advocates Mr Obama champions above are doing just the opposite of what he says they will do, to me. At a time when we need to harvest our own resources to the fullest of our capabilities, Mr. Obama has banned drilling in the Gulf, stopped natural resource permits in the West, clamped down on our coal industry, and increased our overall dependency on Foreign oil in two short years. Throw in the millions of taxpayer dollars wasted on solar companies that have went out of business recently, or moved back to China, and it is quite laughable for Mr. Obama to make the above statements.

Near the end of Mr. Obama’s Op-ed, he makes the following statement:

“Despite a lot of heated rhetoric, our efforts over the past two years to modernize our regulations have led to smarter—and in some cases tougher—rules to protect our health, safety and environment. Yet according to current estimates of their economic impact, the benefits of these regulations exceed their costs by billions of dollars”

I’m sorry Mr. President, but those “current estimates” of all these bloated government agencies and new programs saving us billions of dollars, simply won’t put food on my table or a roof over my head. And when you are creating thousands of new Government jobs, that is just more taxes we will have to pay for zero proven benefit. In two short years you have increased the size and scope of our government more than any other U S President in history. Now you expect us to believe that your newest executive order will help small businesses and create jobs? I might have believed that if you had proposed this two years ago before you crippled our economy with your big government expansion.