By Elaine Donnelly
Extending sexual misconduct to combat units
Independent voices from the TWT Communities
Knowledgeable officials are expecting a regulatory tsunami after the election. By law, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is required to publish a report each April and October about new regulations that government agencies are considering. OMB failed to publish the April report. The question is why -- what is it hiding?
When the Obama administration agreed to set the first-ever federal limits on runoff in Florida, environmental groups were pleased. Nearly three years later — with a presidential election looming and Florida expected to play a critical role in the outcome — those groups are still waiting.
Cass Sunstein, administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), recently outlined how he and others in the White House Office of Management and Budget were eliminating bureaucratic red tape in the executive branch agencies. In fact, while the rollout of the White House's widely touted regulatory reform initiative may have started with a bang, it has followed with a whimper. In contrast to the fanfare surrounding issuance of Executive Order 13563, or his May 26 announcement of the preliminary results of a government-wide review of the current morass of federal regulations, Mr. Sunstein's Aug. 23 release of final agency plans to scale back regulations was, for the most part, a non-event.
Will President Obama's governmentwide review of existing regulations have a positive net impact on the psyche and bottom lines of small-business owners? The short answer is no. The burden of the existing system, made worse by the torrent of new regulations, has become far too costly and intrusive.
President Obama, in his State of the Union address Tuesday night, was right to focus on the challenges the United States faces as domestic companies try to compete with low-cost global competitors. But he was wrong to suggest that the United States can "win the future" by getting Washington more involved in innovation and education.
The American people are desperate for a Congress that reins in the federal bureaucracy. Yesterday, 13 senators and a House member introduced legislation called the REINS Act to do just that. It is legislation that desperately needs to be passed.
