Good article on this (and source of that quote):
“Trump undertakes most ambitious regulatory rollback since Reagan”
http://wapo.st/2kIbjyk
Simple question: is this true?
I’m guessing the answer is not so simple. What do y’all think?
I think Trump’s motivation is all about profit for him and his ilk. Hence roll back regulations everywhere and give the super wealthy tax breaks.
It’s not like he’s been covert about it, after all.
I definitely agree with that. And Republicans have wanted to roll back regulations for decades for precisely the reasons you name.
But I’m wondering if there’s any truth to Sean Spicer’s statement (which represents the Republican’s overt, “public interest” rationale for rolling back regulations). IOW, it’s good for the wealthy, but it is also good for the public-- or not?
ISTM that there is a certain kind of person who dismisses any regulation they disagree with as “overregulation” or “bureaucracy”, when they’re not complaining that it “strangles business”.
How’s the mortgages bubble working for you guys? We’re finally recovering from our own, here…
Without laws, thieves, burglars, con-men and other criminals can rob you blind. That’s just how Trump likes it & wants it.
“Ethics.”
"Effics…? “What’s tha…? …A cable channel…?”
During the debates when, in response to Hilary’s accusation of not paying taxes, Trump proudly responded, “That makes me smart!”, he was confirming what his life’s actions have always loudly announced.
That he’d be a fool NOT to exploit every perceived advantage to the very ragged fringes of what’s legal. (Ethics don’t really come into it for him.)
Expecting him to do otherwise now that he’s got all the power is a little silly. He was never hiding who he was or how he operated.
I know rolling back regulations can increase profits and make rich people richer. And that’s one of the reasons Trump and the Republicans want to do it. Those are a given.
Sean said too many regulations interfere with the Holy Grail of “job creation.” This implies that rolling back regulations will motivate or incentivize those same rich people to “create jobs.”
Question: is there any truth to that or is it just more supply-side economics bullshit?
It’s bullshit.
Among other things, because in any case the problem wouldn’t be the amount of regs, but their quality.
Here’s the deal about regulations: they aren’t something that government bureaucrats create out of thin air. Rather, they’re how laws get turned into something that can be implemented.
For instance, regulations governing what pollutants can be emitted into the air and water, and how much of them, stem from the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts passed at the beginning of the 1970s, including their amendments since then, and the Supreme Court interpretations of the laws. (For instance, if I understand correctly, a Dubya-era Supreme Court decision said that the EPA had the responsibility under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon emissions.)
It’s always possible to say that some of the regulations overreach, that they go beyond their statutory mandates. But that’s not something the opponents of regulations very often say, because that gets you into a down-into-the-weeds discussion about how well the regs embody their underlying laws, which inevitably points back to the laws themselves.
And anyway, the point of attacking (alleged) overregulation is to point at faceless bureaucrats who write the regs, rather than at Congress which writes the laws that need regs to flesh them out. Especially in an era when Republicans are in charge of Congress.
Those ‘job creators’, ARE the people who shipped all the jobs to the third world.
To cut costs and increase profits. Nothing personal, you understand, it’s just business.
It’s bullshit. Same as it was the last time people bought into it.
I fly airplanes for a living, and the last time this came around, the FAA and a few other government agencies were exempt from this sort of pruning of regulations. I wonder why that could be?
Might it be because hamstringing the FAA would almost certainly result in fiery death? Interesting that we don’t have the same sense of urgency when it comes to finance and the environment.
Not all regulations are good or well done. It’s ridiculous to lump in those that are vital with those that are detrimental. We have a bunch of procurement regulations that definitely cause more costs as well as frustration and anger than they are worth. No doubt they were well meaning at one point, but what folks seem to forget is that even if the regulation started off perfectly it gets changed over time as different political groups twist it. And even those not so twisted can be nightmares that someone THOUGHT would do one thing but in the end does something else.
That said, Trump seems to be taking the shotgun approach and just mowing things down arbitrarily. Just because some regulations are bad or harmful doesn’t mean the vast majority of them are, and even the bad ones you need to really be cautious in how you take them down (or if you change them what effect they will have on the process). Trump is not doing that nor does it seem likely he will. He’s a bull in the china shop in many way…he doesn’t understand the system nor seemingly care to, has surrounded himself with folks who are equally clueless about politics and how the system works, and is just jerking his knee.
[QUOTE=elbows]
During the debates when, in response to Hilary’s accusation of not paying taxes, Trump proudly responded, “That makes me smart!”, he was confirming what his life’s actions have always loudly announced.
That he’d be a fool NOT to exploit every perceived advantage to the very ragged fringes of what’s legal. (Ethics don’t really come into it for him.)
[/QUOTE]
Um…you know, I think Trump is an idiot too. However, assuming he’s staying within the bounds of the law and using the regulations that are on the books, he WOULD be kind of stupid to pay more than he has too. Do YOU pay more in taxes than you have too? Do you use Turbo Tax or some other program to check to see if you are paying too much or can get a larger tax break? Ethics don’t really come into it. I’m fairly sure that Hillary uses a tax specialist as well…and she would be a fool not too.
Funny though…I bet there are some IRS regulations that people on this board would be behind getting rid of. Say, some of the tax loopholes that rich people use to shield their earnings? 
Regulations are - in some ways - like the missing link. Say there is a gap in the fossil record. If a fossil is discovered within that gap, does that resolve the ambiguities? Or does it create 2 gaps when there was previously just 1?
Regulations are largely (primarily?) a result of the increased complexity of all aspects of our society. Look back any time a decade or more ago. Countless aspects of communications/finances/transportation/production/etc were vastly simpler. Throughout history, folk have profited from trying to push the limits, and exploit legal gaps. Nothing inherently bad about that, it is just a time-honored way to differentiate your business for profit. As technology and finances become more complicated and faster, the ability for private businesses to advance outstrips the government’s ability to anticipate. In fact, most regulation is reactive, rather than proactive. So business is always leaping ahead, with government striving to keep up.
We also seem to have a culture in which various actors are increasingly unwilling to act within general constraints, but instead, prefer specific rules. I sense that in previous centuries, folk were more willing to have more general guidelines governing such things as fairness and responsibility, with courts ruling on individual disputes. Now, we want rights and responsibilities spelled out ahead of time…
Final point, regulations get HUGE over time. Take the Social Security Act, enacted in the 1930s. Each time a new reg is passed, they do not overhaul the entire thing so that it reads as a seamless whole. Instead, with any major area of law, you end up with a complex patchwork. Inevitably, there are gaps, contradictions, and inconsistencies.
The vast majority of “job creators” are small businesses, and there are a very large number of regulations which are designed to protect small businesses from unfair competition from mega-corporations. Remember when Rockefeller was able to drive all of his competitors out of business by leveraging the vast might of Standard Oil? What effect do you think that had on job creation? And so we created regulations to stop that. Those regulations were surely bad for Rockefeller, but they were good for almost everyone else.
Have you ever worked for a small company trying to compete against large ones on government contracts? If so you wouldn’t think that regulations are necessarily designed to protect the little guys.
That’s the thing. Regulations vary, and some are necessary and do a good job and some don’t. In many cases they are a muddled mess because they have been twisted first by one group then by another, as well as having to change with the times.
I don’t really think that when Trump boasts of cutting regulations that he’s thinking of federal procurement regs. I know that his supporters don’t. They think he is talking about the coal mining job-killing environmental regulations. They think this will bring back those types of jobs.
Like I said, Trump is like a bull in a china shop. I don’t think he’s trying to look at regulations closely and figure out which ones are detrimental and then carefully look to how you’d need to modify or get rid of them with an eye towards how they connect to other regulations or processes…he is just bulling forward and smashing the place up. A lot of Republican voters have been dreaming of a non-political president who doesn’t understand the process or politics or thinks about ramifications of actions…so, they are getting exactly what they wanted out of this guy.
The weaker power of smaller businesses is a separate issue than OP’s. But I’ll mention Bill Parks who has various ideas on improving corporate income tax including making the tax rate graduated — bigger (higher profit) companies would pay at a higher rate.
I never said that regulations necessarily protect the little guy: Some do the opposite, and some are independent of business size. But some of them do protect the little guy, and I strongly suspect that those are disproportionately the ones that Trump wants to cut.
Of course, part of the problem is that people are naturally most aware of the regulations that effect them, and that they have to go to some trouble to comply with. And since the only regulations most people know are the ones that are bothersome to them, they make the leap to assuming that they’re all bothersome.
One thing that is missed in all this debate is the problem of conflicting laws and how does the administration write good regulations … for example, one law requires a certain amount of board feet of logs be harvested per square mile of Federal forests … but another law says we have to protect the eco-system of some endangered bird … no matter what regulation is written, it will break one of these two laws … quite literally forest management was decided in the courts, probably the worst government agency to be making these decisions …
Until the courts make their final decision, lumber mills are shut down and all those family wage jobs disappear … not because of regulations, but rather conflicting laws … thus this is all Congress’ fault … please elect better in 2018 …