Revenue has become a bad word to repubs. They now oppose anything that raises revenue, even closing loopholes for oil companies, multi-billion tax avoiders like GE or hedge fund managers.
And that makes their position look pretty ridiculous to the average American. Repubs are ideologues. You can't govern effectively as an ideologue. Reality is more nuanced than anyone's ideology.
Some progressives have the same kind of knee-jerk reaction to "cut regulations" as repubs have to "raise revenues." OMG, that must be de-regulating. It must be bad.
Reality. Not so simple. Yes, financial, environmental, food and drug and many more areas of regulation are critical. In the financial area, we need more regulation to protect our economy and our citizens.
BUT, over the years, many government regulations have been written that add red tape and hours of make-work--especially onerous for small business, who do not have huge staffs to handle it.
When the President announces the results of a major effort to overhaul government red-tape, this is a good thing. This is an example of making government work for the people. Follow me below the fold.
A rec list diarysounds an alarm over President Obama's recently completed effort to cut government red tape. Any many commenters jumped onboard accusing the president of acting like a repub again and promoting de-regulation.
Fortunately, many other commenters saw this move for what it really is:
Every agency has produced their final plans, and all specific rules proposed for change have been identified.
In fact, few regs are being outright "dropped" -- most are being modified... and what's more, just from reading through a couple of agency plans -- I'm not even sure it would be right to say "Business Regulations"... many of the rule changes are more "individual to government" interactions.
Commerce is streamlining patent applications and patent application change processes -- making them cheaper and more accessible.
Agriculture is eliminating the need for paper filings for SNAP applications -- applicants can now be verified electronically or by phone.
Transportation is proposing a host of changes that simply replace archaic rules that depend on sight, with modified rules that allow newer instruments to be used.... as well as making it easier for localities to initiate certain smaller scale projects like sidewalk replacement. (Unfortunately I don't know who to credit this comment to, as I missed the sig when I copied it and now, sifting through 100's of comments I can't find it again.)
Some commenters didn't attack the program's goals, but objected to it as buying into repub frames.
But this is not about repub frames.
This is not about de-regulation by any stretch of the imagination.
It's about cutting red tape. It's streamlining regulations.
When you understand the vital importance of good regulation to keep our citizens and our economy safe, this initiative is even more important.
If average citizens and small businesses experience lots of government red tape, then it's easy for repubs to give "regulation" in general a bad name and get the public on their side.
Regulation is critical. Keeping stupid red tape on the books? Not so much.
So, everyone, please appreciate the value of this initiative. It is not the president acting like a repub. It is the president engaging in Good Government--something Democrats do a whole lot better than repubs.