Economic activity increasingly shifts toward government outright (health care, retirement, education) or exists under “Mother-May-I” constraints like energy production does. The greatest threat to job creation, wealth and prosperity is that we extend these anti-freedom regulatory policies into tomorrow’s innovations in communications, robotics/automation, manufacturing, and sciences and technology.
When
more and more activity falls within the ambit of government rather than that of
private competitive enterprise, rules and regulations, executive orders and
“notices” take on ominous new significance……Regulations with economically
significant impact ($100 million or more in annual impacts) are supposed to
receive special attention from agencies and from reviewers at the Office of
Management and Budget.
But
guidance documents with equivalent impacts may escape cost-benefit or other
scrutiny. Decisions may be made by agencies, and private parties compelled to
act or not act, without formal regulation or thorough understanding of costs. ……Such
activism constitutes regulation not properly designated as such, and so
we know it is not controlled, because even above-board regulation is not
reviewed and pruned.
A
July 2012 U.S. House Committee on
Oversight and Government Reform noted how agencies have “skirted the
regulatory process” with “misuse of guidance documents.”
Guidance documents, while not legally binding or technically
enforceable, are supposed to be issued only to clarify regulations already on
the books. However… they are increasingly used to effect policy changes, and
they often are as effective as regulations in changing behavior due to the
weight agencies and the courts give them. Accordingly, job creators feel forced
to comply......To Read More......
No comments:
Post a Comment