Jeb Bush had an Opinion article published in September 23rd Wall Street Journal entitled" How I'll Slash the Regulation Tax." His premise is that Federal Government regulations cost too much and destroy initiative to start new businesses. He states that he wants to help small businesses. Then later on in the article he says" As president, I'll repeal the coal ash rule, the clean water rule, net neutrality and much more." It isn't clear to me how any of those "repeals" will help small business. Repealing the coal ash rule, will certainly help "big coal" companies such as that of the Koch Brothers. Repealing the clean water rule, will probably kill off a lot of small businesses who sell and install equipment to clean water before it goes into the environment, it will also help big mines who have huge settling ponds of harmful chemicals. How does that help small businesses? He also wants to kill the "net neutrality rule" of the FCC which was designed to help small business start up on equal footing with the large telecoms. How can that possibly help small businesses.
Jeb also didn't mention the fact that the reason we had the huge downturn in the economy in 2008 was because we had no regulations concerning Credit Default Swap Derivatives. These securities "fell through a crack" in the regulation environment among the various agencies: SEC, HUD, etc, so when the large "too big to fail" banks got stuck with immense loses, it caused the whole economy to stall, and required the Government to bail them all out. We needed better, smarter regulation, but CEOs of some of the large institutions, such as Jamie Dimon of J.P.Morgan lobbied hard to keep it deregulated, and the Bush administration agreed. Now, Jeb Bush is complaining of the over regulation, just at the time that a former owner of a peanut farm went to prison for knowingly shipping peanuts contaminated with salmonella, and VW admitted that they had cheated on the tests of their diesel powered cars. Darrell Delamaide of USA Today also notes in an October 1st editorial that Bush picked a bad time to take this position, and it doesn't seem to be a position that most of the voters would understand or rally around
Regulations are a necessary evil. I like to think of regulations as "rules of the game." If the game of monopoly had no rules, everyone playing the game could dip into the money in the bank and buy as many hotels they wanted and collect from anyone. The game would no longer be fun, or fair! On the other hand, it is the Governments task to make sure the rules they pass are necessary, easy to follow, not conflicting, enforceable, and not impose burdensome costs. Regulations should not impact schedules too much either. It is ridiculous to have to wait 8 to 10 years for approval of a project. When a regulation is put in place, funding should be allocated to ensure that the regulators will be able to approve projects within reasonable time. In fact, the law should establish timelines under which the agency in charge of the regulation must meet or face some sort of sanction. I do agree with Jeb, that it is time to streamline some of the regulations, and it might be useful to form a commission to work through some of them. One of the biggest "regulations" is our tax law which does involve many conflicting regulations, immense amounts of written laws and instructions, and huge amounts of paperwork required by individuals and corporations. Streamlining our individual and corporate income taxes would be one of the best first steps of any administration interested in reducing the "regulation tax."
Jeb also didn't mention the fact that the reason we had the huge downturn in the economy in 2008 was because we had no regulations concerning Credit Default Swap Derivatives. These securities "fell through a crack" in the regulation environment among the various agencies: SEC, HUD, etc, so when the large "too big to fail" banks got stuck with immense loses, it caused the whole economy to stall, and required the Government to bail them all out. We needed better, smarter regulation, but CEOs of some of the large institutions, such as Jamie Dimon of J.P.Morgan lobbied hard to keep it deregulated, and the Bush administration agreed. Now, Jeb Bush is complaining of the over regulation, just at the time that a former owner of a peanut farm went to prison for knowingly shipping peanuts contaminated with salmonella, and VW admitted that they had cheated on the tests of their diesel powered cars. Darrell Delamaide of USA Today also notes in an October 1st editorial that Bush picked a bad time to take this position, and it doesn't seem to be a position that most of the voters would understand or rally around
Regulations are a necessary evil. I like to think of regulations as "rules of the game." If the game of monopoly had no rules, everyone playing the game could dip into the money in the bank and buy as many hotels they wanted and collect from anyone. The game would no longer be fun, or fair! On the other hand, it is the Governments task to make sure the rules they pass are necessary, easy to follow, not conflicting, enforceable, and not impose burdensome costs. Regulations should not impact schedules too much either. It is ridiculous to have to wait 8 to 10 years for approval of a project. When a regulation is put in place, funding should be allocated to ensure that the regulators will be able to approve projects within reasonable time. In fact, the law should establish timelines under which the agency in charge of the regulation must meet or face some sort of sanction. I do agree with Jeb, that it is time to streamline some of the regulations, and it might be useful to form a commission to work through some of them. One of the biggest "regulations" is our tax law which does involve many conflicting regulations, immense amounts of written laws and instructions, and huge amounts of paperwork required by individuals and corporations. Streamlining our individual and corporate income taxes would be one of the best first steps of any administration interested in reducing the "regulation tax."
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