Thread: whar be congress sailin' to?

Originally Posted by adaher

Actually, both parties agree that we need regulatory reform. Agencies issue hundreds, sometimes thousands, of new rules every year, and old ones aren't taken off the books even when they contradict new ones or are obsolete. As a reporter found out, there is also no way for an average citizen, or even a powerful business owner, to easily find out what their obligations are. A simple question about noise regulations got a reporter shuffled all over the USDA and she never did get an answer. That's a problem. The law is worthless if no one can reasonably know how to comply with it.

Most of the regulatory low-hanging fruit was picked by the 1970s. Changes in scientific knowledge and technology will require some new regulations every year, but most regulations since the 70s are just bureaucrats justifying their jobs.

In 1993, Bill Clinton put Al Gore in charge of Reinventing Government, an effort to cut red tape in the government. It was wildly successful. Gore eliminated enough books of regulations that he represented them by standing behind a huge stack that was bigger than he was. Would have been cool if he'd set them on fire. He saved businesses and taxpayers billions.

Bush and Obama, unfortunately, haven't been too serious about staying on top of the regulatory behemoth. Bush only cared when his friends were affected, and Obama actually encourages the issuance of new regulations to the point where it's actually destroying jobs and preventing any new building. And as we saw with the USDA, he doesn't actually know what his regulatory agencies are doing.

ahoy Adaher,

yer observations all seem sensible to me, matey.

i just want to make sure the baby isn't tossed out with the bilgewater.

- MeadHallPirate

Republicans will try to do that sometimes, but the current effort is being sponsored by both Virginia Dems in the Senate and supported by the President. It's likely that he'll reiterate his support for this effort when he announces his jobs plan.

One big change under consideration is that all regulations that cost more than $100 million to comply with would require Congressional authorization.

Congress is sailin' in circles.
There's a terrible fight going on by the stern post, with some swabbies pulling the tiller to the right , and others pulling it to the left, and they can't even agree what chart to use, so we drift where the wind blows us as we have lost the ability to sail a steady course.
We have a terrible problem with the debt, but not enough of a problem to let tax rates go back to where they were before we had a terrible problem with the debt.
We hear about confidence being restored being the key to jobs, but I don't know about you, but I have never hired anyone based on my confidence that taxes would stay low, I always based my hiring on the need to service customers, and the hiring happened when the needs of my customers strained my staff.
And I know that businesses could save a lot of money, if they could just dump their toxic waste in the river like they used to, or burn the cheapest high sulfur coal without being forced to use expensive scrubbers, and drug companies could bring forth all sorts of new medicines if they weren't forced to prove they were safe and effective.

I'd like to see the government steer a steady course, and not straight for the reefs like Bushie Boy did, but in the same direction we was going when things seemed to be going a lot better.

I think things will settle down after the 2012 elections. The 2010 elections were a big victory, but midterms where there's a change in power tend to make the winning party hungry to do it again next year, so they are out to make a point more than to get things done.

One of two things will happen as a result of 2012:

1) Republicans sweep, implement their agenda.
2) Republicans fail to sweep, in which case they become much more reasonable by necessity. Of course, if the GOP gets wiped out in 2012, what's left will be more reasonable. Hopefully Democrats will be more humble as well, but given that they think so little of the voters that they didn't change their leadership and are running a lot of 2010 losers, I have to wonder. And Democrats are still avoiding townhalls, even with Republicans starting to get afraid of their own constituents. So there doesn't seem to be much responsiveness there.

For what it's worth, Intrade predicts as of now that Obama will win reelection, but Republicans will control the House and Senate. Which to me is actually the worst of all worlds, because both sides will try to declare victory. I'd actually prefer it if everything flipped(GOP gets White House and Senate, Dems get House) because that would demonstrate public anger and might focus some minds. Plus that would mean even more new blood than we got in 2010.