I am not one to usually hammer away at other Democrats for their dumb ideas, after all we have plenty of those piñatas from the Right, but Sen. Mark Warner’s Op-Ed in the Washington Post is so ridiculous that it deserves some attention and derision.
In his short post he makes a weak case for changing the way that the Federal government regulates business. He trots out the newest trope from the Republicans of "uncertainty". Instead of uncertainty about taxes being the reason that business is hoarding 2 trillion, and thus not creating jobs it is the fact that they don’t know what the regulatory environment will be.
"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"
While paying lip-service to the needs for things like food safety and safe drilling by energy companies, Warner wants us to continue on the binge of deregulation that brought us such hits as the housing collapse and the foreclosure fraud wave that is just now stating to crest in State Attorney Generals offices nation wide.
He says in his article:
As a former CEO, I think the best option is to adopt a regulatory "pay as you go" system. I am drafting legislation that would require federal agencies to identify and eliminate one existing regulation for each new regulation they want to add.
This is a nutty idea that only business could love. It assumes that every time there is an identified need for a new regulation there is an obvious need to get rid of one. This makes it sound as though there is a upper limit to the number of regulations that can ever be affective and we have already reached it. Nothing could be further from the truth.
One of the reasons that regulations tend to expand is the gaming of the system by business. Being able to follow the letter of the law, but violate the spirit if it adds to the bottom line is a major focus of attention by U.S. businesses. As long as no one knows or no law is actually broken (and sometimes not even that much) the business community is happy. Then it becomes clear that an older regulation is not having the affect desired, then new ones go into place.
It is not like the amount of regulation does not vary. We saw the criminal Bush administration taking apart regulations left and right. This is an unseen aspect of the legislation Gov. Warner is proposing. Say we adopted his perfidious plan and then a Republican administration came to power. They cut the number of regulations and then at some time later a Democratic President comes to power. Under Warner’s bill the new administration would be constrained by the total number of regulations that exist when they take office.
This whole thing would have a ratchet down affect which would eventually leave us in the position of having to either repeal the legislation or lose the ability to regulate more than a few aspects of business.
That state of affairs may be the end game that business in this country is looking for, but it not one that we should let them set the table to achieve.
There is another aspect of this whole uncertainty argument that I’d like to address. There is no certainty in business. Things change all the time in business and that should be built into any model. Having a good popular product today is no guarantee of success tomorrow if you do not change with the changing conditions. No company is supposed to have a guarantee of success, business is about risk. While it is true that minimizing risk is on every CEO’s wish list, it is something that should not be granted by the government. To do so only favors the existing businesses and the bigger ones at that.
In the worlds largest economy, there is plenty of money to go around. If someone wants to do the work to build a business and they get some average breaks they can do so. The idea that the government should reduce the amount of uncertainty for business shows a fundamental flaw in the faith in the market. Why would you need to stack the deck in favor of your company if it really is the one that provides the best product, with the best service at the best price?
The fact we have allowed too much consolidation in the name of efficiency. Sure it pumps up the stock price to be the dominate player in a field but it does not spur innovation or reduce prices. Worse our allowing of massive consolidation has given the major players in just about every field of endeavor the kind of money that allows them to get the ear of a former COE like Warner and push stupid deregulatory schemes like this "pay-go" one.
Mark Warner is the kind of Democrat that could win Virginia. He is in the mold of the DLC pro-business wing of the party. To win in traditionally conservative Virginia that is what it took. He did a lot of positive things for the image of the party, but that does not automatically make his ideas good ones. In fact today’s column shows just how wrong a Democrat can be.
Business is important, I am not going to down play that, but it can never be more important than the good of the people or the nation. To favor policies just because they are good for business is not the way to get us out of our economic straights. There are plenty of businesses making record profits right now, by downsizing, out sourcing to other nations and whipping the peon’s to crank productivity to 11. It does not actually boost the economy unless there is more demand for the goods and services of companies, without that it is upward churn to drive stock prices.
The business interests represented by Sen. Warner are using a crisis to push for their advantage. They say if the business climate is more favorable then there will be more business and job. Well, the business climate was very favorable in the Bush years and the overall job growth for that time was a net negative. What does that say about making things more favorable for business?
In the end it is good to have folks like Sen. Warner in the Democratic Party, we should be a big tent and have a place for everyone to speak up, even if their ideas are not the ones we need right now. This idea is a dumb one. It should not be considered seriously by anyone. If there were real data that we were strangling off business with regulation then it might be different. Right now, however, with tons of contaminated eggs, spinach and other foods, with the Gulf of Mexico still reeling from the damage of BP and the foreclosure fraud mess coming down the pike, it is clear we are have not erred on the side of too many regulations, but on the side of too few.
The floor is yours.