Rep. Peterson pushes regulatory reform bill to ‘reduce unnecessary burden on job creators’
Friday, September 23, 2011 at 6:00 am
- 8 Comments
Rep. Collin Peterson is pushing a regulatory reform package that has CEOs singing praises and good government groups concerned.
The Regulatory Accountability Act of 2011 would reform the way federal agencies make rules in order to “reduce unnecessary burdens on job creators.” Opponents of the bill, which was introduced Thursday, say it will stifle health, safety and environmental standards.
Under the proposed legislation, a new regulation would need to have advanced public notice and public comment and be based on scientific and technical evidence. Regulations would also have to undergo a cost-benefit analysis, and agencies would have to adopt the “least costly” alternatives.
The bill creates a class of “high-impact” regulations that would be subject to hearings and would be held to standards that are higher than those set for courtrooms.
“While it is difficult to enact a new law, it’s even harder to get a regulation written correctly,” Peterson said. “In many cases, interest groups try to use regulation to interpret the law in their best interest, instead of following the intent of the law. By bringing transparency and accountability to the regulatory process, the American people will be allowed to have a voice in these policy decisions.”
Andrew Liveris, CEO of Dow Chemical praised the bill.
“We applaud [the lawmakers] for starting Congress down the path toward smarter regulation,” Liveris said in a statement. “America’s business leaders have identified unnecessary and overly prescriptive regulation and the overly burdensome federal regulatory process as major impediments to job creation and growth. The bipartisan Regulatory Accountability Act is a smarter approach to regulation that will meet society’s goals while lessening the economic burden of complex, expensive and often inconsistent rules.”
Liveris was speaking on behalf of the Business Roundtable (BRT), a conservative political group made up of the CEOs of major corporations such as Wal-Mart, GE and Exxon Mobil.
John Engler, president of BRT, praised lawmakers.
“The Regulatory Accountability Act is an important milestone on the road toward meaningful federal regulatory reform,” Engler said. “We stand ready to work with them to achieve smarter regulation and put America back to work.”
But Rick Melberth, director of regulatory policy for the government watchdog group OMB Watch, said the bill is problematic.
“If the provisions of the proposal become law, they will result in a near-moratorium on rules by creating even more obstacles for agencies to overcome in issuing standards that keep us safe from contaminated food, product defects, and polluted air and water,” Melberth wrote. “In addition, the proposal would shift the locus of regulatory decisions to the courts and out of agencies’ hands by providing multiple new opportunities for deep-pocketed corporate interests to challenge agencies at nearly every step of the process.”
He added, “When such special favors are granted to special interests, everyday Americans are further shut out of the regulatory process, giving them less of an opportunity to participate in this essential function of democratic governance.”
The bill contains most of the provisions that the BRT has been lobbying for; on Wednesday, the day before the bill was introduced, the BRT released its own very similar plan.
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Comment posted September 23, 2011 @ 7:17 am
What a joke and as always, a disgrace, these right wingers are. Also, we need to stop letting them define the national verbiage? ‘Job creators’? No – Job Withholders is more appropriate. Job Killers, maybe, but we should respond to their use of that falsehood with a fact-based term, not fall into using their lie.
Comment posted September 23, 2011 @ 10:57 am
There seems to be very little evidence that regulation is holding companies back from hiring more people. Corporate profits are at record highs and many are flush with cash. Many could be hiring, but aren’t. If people and businesses aren’t buying, there’s no need to hire–that’s the most important consideration relative to job creation capacity–not regulation, not taxes.
But the conservative dogma these days is that anything the government does is antithetical to economic prosperity–a myth that can be debunked a thousand times between now and Sunday. Empirical evidence, however, seems to be part of the socialist conspiracy…
Comment posted September 23, 2011 @ 11:46 am
Those groups known to be currently involved with ALEC, as of July 2011, appear in bold.
D
* Deere & Company[5]
* Dell, Inc., ALEC Education Task Force member[27]
* Del Webb Corp.[4]
* Detroit Edison[4]
* Diageo[1]
* The Dial Corp. (now part of Henkel)[4]
* Digital Equipment Corp.[4]
* Digital Products Co.[4]
* Douglass Financial Corp.[4]
* Dow Chemical Company, ALEC Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force member[11] and “Director” level sponsor of 2011 ALEC Annual Conference[7] ($10,000 in 2010)[8][4]
* Dow Corning[4]
* DowElanco (now a division of Eli Lilly)[4]
* Duke Energy Corp., State corporate co-chair of Indiana and South Carolina[3]
* DuPont[5][4]
Comment posted September 23, 2011 @ 12:45 pm
Regulatory uncertainty – The big excuse for businesses to delay hiring and investments because they need a clearer idea how much their compliance costs will increase and how the markets will be warped by changes.
# Unemployment is currently lowest in health care, oil & gas drilling, and the financial sector — which have the most regulation.
# If businesses were worried about future regulatory burdens they’d increase investments today to benefit from the current more lenient regulations.
# McClatchy survey of business owners don’t reveal evidence of anxiety about the regulatory climate.
# Regulatory uncertainty is increased by the very people complaining about it. Pledges to repeal health care reform and efforts to strike it down in court only make it harder for businesses to know what the rules are going to be in the future. The same is true of litigation against EPA’s climate change rules.
# Between 1970 and 1981, Congress passed the federal air and water pollution laws, OSHA, RCRA, the Endangered Species Act, and the Superfund law. No one knew just how these laws would be implemented. No problem then.
# Regulatory uncertainty should, if the theory is right, cause companies to substitute away from capital-intensive projects toward labor-intensive projects. So employment should rise.
# If Obama’s regulatory plans are a big drag on the economy, then the economy should be doing a lot better in countries that are not planning major regulatory initiatives. No evidence of that.
After Thursday’s stock market drop the conversation was all about buiness being content with current payrolls because there is no growth in demand. Businesses were looking for more stimulus from the fed.
http://legalplanet.wordpress.com/2011/09/11/ten-fatal-flaws-in-the-regulatory-uncertainty-argument/
Comment posted September 24, 2011 @ 10:42 pm
Colin Peterson is nothing more than a Republican masquarading as a Democrat. He has sided more with Republicans than he has with Democrats.
Comment posted September 26, 2011 @ 12:51 am
Some of what Peterson seems to be seeking already exists, like the public comment periods and cost/benefit analysis. So what’s he really after?
Comment posted September 26, 2011 @ 8:33 pm
Does Congressman Peterson not remember what happened when Wall Street was deregulated?
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