Obama Admin Withholding Info On Pending Regulations

Also See: Charles Owens' Article

In 1980 the Congress mandated a regulatory agenda from federal agencies.  The law, called the Regulatory Flexibility Act, requires the Administration to release every April and every October a summary of all rules likely to have a “significant economic impact” on small businesses in America. The Obama Administration has ignored the law for the past year, causing many Americans to wonder what regulatory nightmares may be lurking behind the Obama curtain. ~ Curtis Coleman, Chairman of The Institute for Constitutional Policy.

Either the Obama Administration has come to the conclusion that regulations are hurting businesses and the workers they employ, or it is in the midst of a pre-election regulatory slow down to hide its true agenda." ~ John Vinci, Staff Attorney for the Americans for Limited Government

National Journal reports today, “The Obama administration roared into office four years ago with an openly ambitious regulatory agenda, releasing a higher-than-usual number of major regulations in the first two years. In 2012, the number of new regulations has plummeted in a year in which the president’s regulatory policies have emerged as a major campaign theme.

“Federal agencies are sitting on a pile of major health, environmental, and financial regulations that lobbyists, congressional staffers, and former administration officials say are being held back to avoid providing ammunition to Mitt Romney and other Republican critics. . . The drop-off stands out not just compared to earlier years of Obama’s term but also compared to other years in which presidents are running for reelection, according to analyses from experts at George Mason and George Washington universities.”

According to National Journal, “Sources in regular contact with agencies say they’ve been told that new rules won’t resume until after the election, and many expect an avalanche of new major rules shortly afterward. ‘They’re ready to burst,’ said Susan Dudley, director of the Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington University and a top official at the White House Office of Management and Budget during the George W. Bush administration. ‘Some people use the analogy of a closet door—you keep putting things in, and it’s ready to burst.’”

Importantly, the piece notes, “Much of the delayed regulation is tied to major Obama administration policies, not vestigial red tape. Both the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank require significant regulatory clarification in order to move forward.”

The administration is holding back an avalanche of Obamacare regulations in particular, and is set to release them after the election, according to Politico. “The bottled-up rules to set up President Barack Obama’s health care reform law are going to start flowing quickly right after Election Day. . . . The once-steady stream of regulations and rules from the Obama administration — instructions for insurance companies, hospitals and states on how to put the law in place — has slowed to a trickle in recent months in an attempt to avoid controversies before the election. . . . But work has been going on behind the scenes — both in the Department of Health and Human Services and at the state level. As soon as Wednesday, the gears and levers of government bureaucracy are likely to start moving at full speed again.”

Coleman adds, "Not only is the President defying the law, a lot of Americans – especially small business owners who produce two-thirds of American jobs – are rightfully worried about what might be waiting behind the Obama curtain.  And they have good reason to worry.  Some of the regulations skulking behind the President’s disregard for the law include…

• Hundreds of rules yet to be finalized relating to Dodd-Frank financial regulations, regulations that are destroying community banks across America and making it extremely difficult for consumers to get loans, including new home mortgages.
• Hundreds of more rules related to Obamacare, and their potentially devastating impact on businesses.
• The EPA’s new stricter standards on ozone emissions, estimated to cost $90 billion or more annually and jeopardize millions of jobs.
• New rules to control power plant emissions that will dramatically increase energy costs – estimated to cost as much as $100 billion and thousands of jobs in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Missouri and Ohio.

"There is only one way to slow down and maybe stop this tedious destruction of the America economy – and that is to get rid of the Obama curtain entirely."

National Journal adds, “Several people who work closely with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency at the Health and Human Services Department responsible for most of the outstanding health care regulations, say they’ve been told the delays are due to political considerations, not technical difficulties. One congressional staffer who works closely with CMS said they had been told the agency is on ‘lockdown.’ ‘There is clearly a cycle, but people who are career employees in HHS have said this is unusual,’ said Brett Graham, a partner and managing director at the Leavitt Group, which is helping states build exchanges.”

Politico writes, “HHS is expected to begin to release the backlog of regulations. . . . If Obama wins, that work is likely to continue through the early years of his second term. Democrats will want the law put in place as quickly as possible. They face a late 2013 deadline to have the exchanges ready to go. And if Romney wins, the need to get the rules out may become even more urgent for Democrats. Any rules or regulations that are not final by Nov. 22 — 60 days before Romney would be sworn in — can be easily put on hold on Jan. 20. That means the Obama administration would have a huge incentive to have as much of the health law as possible in ‘final’ rule form within two weeks of a Romney victory. Rules and regulations that aren’t final can be more easily changed than those that are. . . .

"That’s all the more reason that David Merritt, managing director at Leavitt Partners, is expecting a ‘torrent of regulations’ after Election Day. ‘I think it’s common knowledge they slow-walked a lot of these. You will see that torrent,’ Merritt said. . . . ‘There’s a lot of chatter that HHS has been very busy working on regulations that they are not wanting to release during the campaign,’ said Gail Wilensky, who led Medicare and Medicaid during the George H.W. Bush administration and is now an economist and senior fellow at Project Hope. ‘My expectation is we will see a flurry [of releases], but we’ll see the biggest flurry if Obama were to lose.’"

Last month, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) said, “Right now, federal agencies are at work on 2,700 new rules. These rules will go on top of a pile of regulations measuring millions of pages. Mr. President, if we want to put people back to work, we have to cut the red tape that is strangling our job creators.”

As Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell explained earlier, “[President Obama has] hammered small businesses with a barrage of new regulations, with dozens more in the pipeline. He expects them to plan for the future without even knowing what their tax and health care liabilities will be. . . . The President may not want to admit it, but the economic mess we’re in is his legacy. And after three and a half years of finger-pointing, he owes it to the American people to be straight about it.”

Coleman concludes, "The Obama Administration has ignored the law for the past year, causing many Americans to wonder what regulatory nightmares may be lurking behind the Obama curtain."  

---

Tags: Obama administration, withholding, regulation information, violating law, election 2012 To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!