Obama's Drilling Moratorium Is Part Of Dems Agenda Hostile To Job Creation

This morning, Michelle Malkin highlighted a Wall Street Journal piece from Saturday, reporting on the decision-making behind the deep water drilling moratorium the Obama administration imposed on the Gulf Coast in the wake of the oil spill. According to the WSJ, “Senior Obama administration officials concluded the federal moratorium on deepwater oil drilling would cost roughly 23,000 jobs, but went ahead with the ban because they didn't trust the industry's safety equipment and the government's own inspection process, according to previously undisclosed documents. Critics of the moratorium, including Gulf Coast political figures and oil-industry leaders, have said it is crippling the region's economy, and some have called on the administration to make public its economic analysis. A federal judge who in June threw out an earlier six-month moratorium faulted the administration for playing down the economic effects.”

The drilling moratorium, though, is just one aspect of the job-killing agenda that the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress are advancing. As Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell explained last month, “For more than a year and a half, the President and his Democrat allies on Capitol Hill have pushed an anti-business, anti-jobs agenda on the American people in the form of one massive government intrusion after another. And then they celebrate.  Well, Americans aren’t celebrating.  Three million of them have lost their jobs lost since Democrats launched their Stimulus.  The folks who lost those jobs aren’t celebrating. . . . As I stand here this morning, millions of Americans are struggling to find jobs — and yet all they see in Washington are Democrats passing massive bills that, at their core, seem to have one thing in common: more job loss. It’s almost as if it’s a prerequisite for any Democrat legislation: If it leads to more job loss, they’ll pass it.”

Indeed, within days of the Democrats’ health care bill passing, there was news that it would cost hundreds of jobs in Florida. One provision in the bill alone is expected to cost 2,500 jobs. Meanwhile, major employers left and right were forced to plan for losses because of the new requirements imposed on them by the health care bill. Among the companies hit were AT&T, 3M, AK Steel,Prudential, Boeing, and Goodrich. Meanwhile, medical device manufacturers and small business owners across the country braced for new taxes imposed on them to pay for Democrats’ bureaucratic monstrosity, which could wind up costing thousands of jobs. And restaurants are facing the prospect of choosing between laying off workings and dropping their health coverage. And on top of all that, a third of employers could face tax penalties thanks to the health care bill.

Democrat legislation has been particularly disastrous for small businesses. The small business group NFIB announced in May, “Small business owners everywhere are rightfully concerned … the healthcare law will devastate their business and their ability to create jobs.” And the U.S. Chamber of Commerce explained that the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill “will only exacerbate uncertainty and jeopardize job creation.” The President’s auto task force pressured GM and Chrysler to close scores of dealerships, costing tens of thousands of jobs, according to The New York Times.

And that’s all without getting to the Democrats’ cap-and-tax bill, which Speaker Nancy Pelosi rammed through the House and which some Democrats still want to pass. Studies last year showed that if that bill became law, it could cost more than 2 million jobs.

No wonder the chairman of the Business Roundtable, a group supportive of Obama which backed the job-killing health care bill, was eventually forced to throw up his hands and complain in June of “the President and Democratic lawmakers . . . of creating an ‘increasingly hostile environment for investment and job creation.’” According to The Washington Post, “Ivan G. Seidenberg, chief executive of Verizon Communications, said that Democrats in Washington are pursuing tax increases, policy changes and regulatory actions that together threaten to dampen economic growth and ‘harm our ability . . . to grow private-sector jobs in the U.S.’”

And now we learn that despite the Obama administration being aware that a Gulf Coast drilling moratorium could cost tens of thousands of jobs, they imposed it anyway, and even went back to re-impose it after a judge threw the original out one out for not taking the economic consequences adequately into account. As Sen. McConnell said, “If it leads to more job loss, they’ll pass it. Americans are tired of this kind of ‘reform.’  Job stifling taxes, regulations, government intrusion.  These appear to be the three pillars of every Democratic legislative effort.  They’re also the three things lawmakers can do that are guaranteed to kill more jobs.” These policies don’t create the conditions for an economic recovery; they’re only making things worse.

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