In listening to the political rhetoric traveling across the airways, the only piece of the debate which ever gets attention seems to be about taxation. What is fair and how much are the only points contested by the talking heads, and the invited, “expert,” pundits. For the purposes of job creation, and economic health, the most important aspect of the conversation is missed almost entirely. It’s not just about the taxes, but also about the regulation, and baby, we got plenty of that, with more planned to arrive. The effects of regulation is impossible to measure. This is one thing Speaker Boehner got completely wrong in his letter to the President. He estimated a cost in the newest round of planned regulations to be about $2 Billion per year, but this is only a beginning point. That might be the cost of compliance immediately, but those are far from the only ill effects these 219 new parasites on our economic activity will have. As businesses react to this newest assault on the free enterprise system, they will hire less employees, who will be paying far less in taxes. Current employees will be laid off, or downsized. Future innovation will be stifled. Consider this, would the wright brothers have been able to invent an airplane in today’s environment? We have already taken Edison’s invention and made it illegal to produce and market.
It is not as if the President is oblivious to this purposeful stagnation of our economy either. During his latest State of the Union Address, and indeed during all of his SOTU Addresses, he claimed that he would work tirelessly, and make one of his top priorities eliminating over burdensome regulations, which were serving only to stunt our economic growth. So of course, during the past year, the Obama Administration has enacted, without the consent of Congress 191 new executive regulations. The Obama Administration plans on placing 219 new ones this year. These are on top of the regulations included in the Health Care monstrosity and the Dodd Frank assault on our entire financial system. The latter is a reform by the way which was passed as a reaction to the financial meltdown of 2008, and will do not a single thing to alleviate the root causes of the mortgage crisis. The root causes of the meltdown, Fannie and Freddie are exempt from the regulation and indeed any scrutiny. Like most governmental promises to protect the masses from the, “big guy,” it actually punishes any small businesses in favor of granting competitive protections to the very big corporations which have been shoved into our faces as the evil we are supposed to hate. The Dodd Frank bill was actually written by the Obama team members who were on the board of Goldman Sachs, hardly a collection of small business entrepreneurs.
Over the last 2 3/4 years, our economy has been brought to its knees. 10 oil rigs have left the gulf for more friendly waters. They have taken thousands of high paying jobs with them. The result will also be higher fuel costs for businesses who use oil to produce their goods and services, which will also make the situation worse. Consequently, tax cuts won’t do squat for us anymore. A change of leadership will. We, now more than ever need a person in the White House who understands the principles of the Free Market System, and will have the political courage to adhere to them. We need to roll back the damage inflicted upon us by the sour little man we hired in November of 2008.
Cross Posted at Musings of a Mad Conservative.
Tags: Government Regulation
