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Kevin Boland
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10/03/2011
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GOP Pushes Job-Creating Agenda, Stopping Excessive Washington Regulations

The House will act on two job-creating bills this week aimed at stopping the Administration’s excessive regulations that are jeopardizing more than 200,000 jobs. CNN noted that:

“House Republicans tried to seize the political upper hand in the job-creation debate Monday, urging President Barack Obama to support GOP-sponsored legislation designed to ease industry burdens imposed by environmental regulations, among other things. Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and other GOP leaders sent a letter to the president noting that the Republican-controlled House is scheduled to consider two bills this week -- an ‘EPA Regulatory Relief Act’ requiring authorities to reissue certain rules in a ‘less burdensome manner,’ and a ‘Cement Sector Regulatory Relief Act’ requiring regulators to reconsider rules affecting an industry critical to new construction.”

The timing couldn’t be better, as job creators and families across America continue to face unprecedented uncertainty from Washington. Washington Post columnist Robert J. Samuelson noted this morning that “’risk aversion’…has become a collective curse”:

“Consider: Corporate managers: As is well known, large companies have $2 trillion of cash and securities, up $520 billion since the end of 2007. That’s money firms could use to hire and invest in plants or new products — if managers were more confident. Instead, they’re stockpiling funds against another financial crisis. Small-business managers: ‘These are the most depressed numbers in history,’ says Holly Wade of the National Federation of Independent Business, whose optimism index started in 1974. Only 11 percent of firms expect to hire in the next three months. Small companies (500 workers or less) represent half of all employment….

“Fickle psychology also explains why massive economic ‘stimulus’ (low interest rates, big deficits) didn’t trigger a powerful recovery. Government stimulus can be diluted if households and businesses move, for whatever reason, in the opposite direction. Paradoxically, the call for stimulus can cause consumers and businesses to retrench by focusing their attention on the economy’s weakness.”

And Mort Zuckerman, the editor-in-chief of US News & World Report wrote in today's Financial Times that:

“The industrialised world, America included, seems stuck in one of those horror movies, where the monster, thought to be slain, morphs into something even more scary. The fear is that a double-dip, or worse, is now upon us. Those who might help us escape are now being held back by the anti-business policies of President Barack Obama....

“This resort to divisive populism – laying the blame on ‘fat cats’ and pillorying the president’s favourite villains – ‘millionaires and billionaires’ – is exactly the wrong approach. It seeds the suspicion that the administration is more interested in campaigning and undermines the confidence that business needs if it is to invest in the face of new regulations, healthcare costs and an increased bureaucracy. Businesses sense that the administration no longer understands how this perceived hostility saps the animal spirits required for taking risks on expansions and start-ups.”

It’s clear that Washington Democrats’ job-crushing policies have thrown a wet blanket on the economy. House Republicans will continue to keep a relentless focus on removing government barriers to private sector job creation. Be sure to check FreedomProject.org regularly for updates.

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