Obama's Red Tape

I am glad to have come across an article titled, Red Tape Rising in the Jan 22nd The Economist...not because it is good news, because it certainly isn’t, but because now I have more information to fight in support of business and economic prosperity.

I don’t know why reading about the rise in red tape struck me so sharply but the realization of what we now face has stirred me to even further advocacy for a return to conservative principles and rejection of the slide towards socialism. This is the cause of our day.

The article begins with a summary of the future we face, "Ever since his thumping in the mid-term elections, Barak Obama has been busily mending relations with business folk. He has extended existing tax cuts, introduced new ones, completed a free-trade deal and appointed a banker as chief of staff. Now he is attending to their biggest grievance: that he has enmeshed them in stifling new rules, form health care and finance to oil-drilling and greenhouse gases."

"In his first two years in office the federal government issues 132 "economically significant" rules, according to Susan Dudley of George Washington University. ("Economically significant" means that either the rule's costs, or its benefits, exceed $100 Million a year.) That is about 40% more than the annual rate under both George Bush junior and Bill Clinton. Many rules associated with the newly passed health-care and financial-reform laws are still to come."

I personally reject the recent moderation in his actions and speeches; after all, if it wasn’t for his failed policies in the first place, we wouldn’t be in such dire straights. Frankly, the only reason he has moderated at all is because even Obama can't ignore the hard reality since the dramatic mid-term election results. But his conversion is a bit to convenient for me; I don’t trust his new found pro-business posturing.

He talks big on one hand while stepping up enforcement on the other. The article states, "Existing rules are also being enforced more keenly. The workplace-safety regulators slapped employers with 167% more violations in Obama's first year than in Bush's last, according to OMB Watch, a liberal watchdog. The FDA has stepped up scrutiny of drugs already approved. The regulatory workforce has grown 16% in Obama's first two years to 276,429, while private employment has fallen." What this means is with federal regulatory jobs have grown to over 20% of the total percent of federal employment; the number of employers has dwindled.

Despite the fact that some businesses concede that some new regulations were needed, the pattern of systematic attack on the job creators means that America will be facing growing debt, deficit, higher fees, increased regulations, shrinking margins, and added risks all while fighting porous borders, pandering to foreign nations, and continued deficit spending. Sounds like the rise in Obama's red tape is further evidence that we need to continue changing the names on the doors on Capitol Hill and on Pennsylvania Avenue.