So the House Freedom Caucus released a list of regulations it plans to roll back.
There’s a lot in there which is bizarre, disturbing, or nonsensical (wait, we really want to make life easier for for-profit colleges?!), but this in particular stood out to me:
Does anyone want this? Does anyone actually think this is a good idea? I was under the impression Trump got a whole lot of mileage out of pointing out how attached Clinton was to the banks. I don’t think there’s anyone on the planet who doesn’t work at one of those wall street banks who thinks allowing for a repeat of 2008 is a good idea. So what’s going on here? Won’t going against the will of the people so clearly and obviously come back to bite them?
The cycle continues. Elect Republicans, start a war, cut taxes, let banks crash. Elect Democrats, fix the messes. Rinse and Repeat.
The House Republicans certainly put the “dumb” in “Freedom” Caucus. Whatever makes more profits for their donors, damn the consequences for the nation.
It reflects on the voters to a point. I doubt many voters said to themselves “gee I hope they deregulate the banks so we can get another Great Recession”. But they are swayed by bullshit lines like “Let’s get rid of job-killing regulations”, not knowing or not caring what the lunatics would do when they gained control of the asylum.
To get a flavor for what’s in store, there is one line in the extensive document really worth reading. The Freedom Caucus places each of 228 regulations slated for elimination into a grid, one of whose columns is cost — **and in most cases they do, indeed, provide an estimated cost of compliance with the regulation divorced from any discussion of the benefits. **When it comes to Rule 211, network neutrality, however, they simply state: “All regulations carry costs, which are inevitably passed on to consumers in one form or another.”
It’s not clear exactly where the Freedom Caucus got this idea or why they think it’s true, but as a broad philosophical statement it’s admirably clear and concise. The network neutrality rule’s proponents say that given the lack of competition in wireless broadband markets, requiring infrastructure owners to treat all internet traffic the same is useful in promoting competition among online services and minimizing infrastructure monopolists’ ability to extract monopoly profits. One might or might not agree with that analysis, but from a normal person’s point of view it would at least be a question worth asking.
The Freedom Caucus view, by contrast, is that all you really need to know about Network Neutrality regulations — or any other kind of regulation — is that it is a regulation and all regulations, by definition, are costly. It’s simply not possible to imagine a rule that corrects for negative externalities, asymmetrical information, imperfect competition, myopia, or any other problem in a socially beneficial way.
Emphasis mine. This is why you don’t elect dogmatic simpletons to public office: life is not that simple. “Regulation is necessarily an evil” is a stupid, dogmatic opinion that simply doesn’t apply half the time. And the damage done can be very hard to reverse.
No matter what happens, the next recession will be blamed on deregulation. The 2008 crisis happened after years of increased regulation and growing SEC budgets, yet “everybody” knows it was caused by deregulation. Just general “deregulation”, no specifics needed. Some blame the crisis on tax cuts. No causal mechanisms outlined, just “tax cuts”.
Actual deregulation? Yes, please. Will Trump hurt the economy, yes, but this isn’t how it will happen. You’ll know it is happening when consumer prices start rising quickly.
Just to be clear The House Freedom Caucus consists of 35 Republicans. It’s a bit premature to claim that “Republicans to Immediately Deregulate Banks”, since there are more than 200 other House Republicans who have to be convinced to go along with their agenda. Not to mention the Senate.
We’ll see how this plays out in determining Ryan’s agenda for The House. Some of this is certainly disturbing, but it’s also the first round in a negotiation* in which that particular Caucus doesn’t have a whole lot of leverage, considering their numbers and the hurdle of getting anything they want to do past the Senate.
*You always ask for a lot more than you’re willing to settle for in the first round
True. I don’t think the average voter really understands or cares about the nuances of policy. They vote based on moral heuristics, which the democrats kind of suck at. The republicans have a strong and appealing moral narrative, the democrats do not (well they do, but they do not use it).
And the Republican majority will just move everything to “reconciliation” conferences, bypassing the filibuster. Be prepared to see a lot of irrelevant amendments pop up in these committees.
(To be fair, the Democrats did it too…but not often. The Republicans will make it a staple of their legislative practice.)
There are 10 Democratic Senators up for re-election in 2018 in Trump states. How keen do you think they are on filibustering Trump’s agenda, just endorsed by the voters in their states? It’s not at all certain that Schumer will be able to maintain a filibuster even if he wants to.
Even if Schumer can, “filibuster all the things” probably isn’t a winning strategy in the Reid-initiated era of just eliminating the filibuster when it’s inconvenient.