Tuesday's news of a new executive order on regulatory review was not welcomed by some progressives. President Obama announced his move in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, and it was widely perceived as an olive branch to regulated businesses.
But in its substance, the order mostly boosts the case for a strong government hand in protecting the public from the negative consequences of the free market.
The timing of the president's actions is important, and has played a big role in how they've been received. Employment growth has lagged the economic recovery and there is massive ground to make up for jobs lost during the recession. After the mid-term election shellacking of the Democratic Party, many Washington insiders are looking for a rightward tack by the administration.
But while the President certainly did make some rhetorical concessions in his op-ed that recognized that regulation can have its downsides (like the now-infamous saccharine example), the substance of the order, and the president's reaffirmation of the need for regulation at a time like this, show a deep commitment to an aggressive agenda of agency regulation.
In fact, there are several important new changes in the order that respond to long-sought-after demands from progressives. There are beefed up public participation requirements, including a requirement for better use of the Internet to engage the public.
In a separate presidential memorandum, Obama creates a system to significantly increase the transparency of agency enforcement, which is where the rubber meets the road for all regulatory programs. This transparency will give public interest groups the tools they need to ensure that the rules on the books actually have the bite of an agency watchdog.
There is also new language added to the order that encourages agencies to take into account "equity, human dignity, fairness, and distributive impacts." While it is too soon to say exactly how that will play out in practice, it gives advocates a hook to go to agencies and push for programs that help the most vulnerable members of society.
Perhaps the most important piece of the new order, and the subject that has gotten the most attention, is a requirement for agencies to conduct "retrospective analysis." This analysis has been called for from both sides of the political spectrum, but importantly, the Obama order requires agencies to look both at "excessively burdensome" and "insufficient" rules -- directing agencies to identify areas where rule could be eliminated, but also strengthened.
At a time of deep economic crisis, a call to increase regulatory stringency should help alleviate fears that the administration is backing away from its track record of strong protections.
The order is definitely a compromise, like pretty much everything that happens in government. In addition to these largely progressive reforms, the president is requiring agencies to conduct special analysis for small businesses that could encourage agencies to write permissive loopholes into new rules. In some cases, small business exemptions might make sense, but this process gives an unjustified precedence to a particular group.
Better would have been to expand the section on distributional analysis into a more detailed and systematic procedure, which could take small business impacts into account, as well as other important factors like how rule affect low-income or minority communities.
But overall, the order is a solid step forward in the direction of more balanced review. If progressives want to find evidence that the Administration is changing its tune, they will have to look elsewhere (for example, recent moves by EPA to delay important rulemakings on hazardous air pollutants).
On this executive order, the olive branch offered to industry is more likely to bear fruit for the public interest in the long term.
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Ronnie Shows: Congressional Democrats Should Take a Hint From Obama
A president is at his most powerful then, his bully pulpit is stuffed to the gills and overflowing with political capital. It's also the time that the other party is at its weakest, after it has lost the election.
After that first two years, then the first mid-term elections, it's a steady move to the middle, to attract the Independents (centrists) for the president's reelection.
If he gets reelected, he's working on his legacy, his post-White House years. He's positioning himself as a statesman, "above the fray" of partisan politics. He's looking for his place on the world stage.
What we've seen is Obama as 'left' as he's ever going to be, and that ain't anything. With his readiness to cut Social Security at this stage in his presidency, what he'll be doing after another win should be bone-chilling to Democratic voters. Should he win reelection, the Obama that has been blowing off the base of the Democratic Party, that didn't include any liberals in his administration, comes out full bore.
he can only fool us so many times. after a while even a beaten dog has to say enough is enough.
We'll see how this shakes out in the end, but the history of those actions hints at what to expect.