Obama signs executive order opening door wide open for Wall St. to gut gov't regulations

brentspeak

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Tue Jan-18-11 04:56 PM
Original message

Obama signs executive order opening door wide open for Wall St. to gut gov't regulations

Edited on Tue Jan-18-11 05:01 PM by brentspeak

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/18/obama-orders-regulation-review/

Obama orders regulation review
Jan 18, 2011
President Obama, in his latest effort to patch frayed relations with businesses, signed an http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/01/18/improving-regulation-and-regulatory-review-executive-order">executive order Tuesday intended to "strike the right balance" between health, safety and environmental regulations and economic growth.

The president, in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, wrote that his order will prompt "a government-wide review of the rules already on the books to remove outdated regulations that stifle job creation and make our economy less competitive."

"It's a review that will help bring order to regulations that have become a patchwork of overlapping rules, the result of tinkering by administrations and legislators of both parties and the influence of special interests in Washington over decades," Obama wrote.

The business world has locked horns with the Obama administration over such legislation as health care and financial reform that the president signed into law last year. In his annual State of American Business address on Jan. 11, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue targeted the "web of red tape" in health care, financial reform and energy regulation as holding back economic recovery.

The Republicans and the US Chamber of Offshoring American Jobs are http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2011/01/republicans-favor-obamas-plan-to-review-regulations/1">gushing over this:

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2011/01/republicans-favor-obamas-plan-to-review-regulations/1

Kudos have come from key House Republicans: Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Rep. Darrell Issa, who chairs the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. They actually went further -- and claimed credit for having the idea first.

Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Boehner, called it "a welcome acknowledgement that government regulations do, in fact, have economic consequences. This is something American job creators have come to know all too well over the last few years."

snip

ssa went so far as to offer additional help: "I look forward to providing the president with insights gained from our current effort to hear directly from job creators about what they perceive as barriers standing in the way of their ability to create jobs," he said.

And from U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue came this review of Obama's order, complete with a call for Congress to take a more active role

Here is the key section of Obama's executive order:

This order requires that federal agencies ensure that regulations protect our safety, health and environment while promoting economic growth.

Which means that the entire federal regulatory process is now subverted from something specifically meant to protect the health and safety of the public to something where corporate profits must get factored in.