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Jeb Bush Vows to Slash the Regulatory State. Nicely. Sort of.
Jeb Bush is back in the Wall Street Journal’s opinion pages this morning, explaining “How I’ll Slash the Regulation Tax.” Similar to his tax plan, there’s both rhetoric here to warm a conservative’s heart — whatever that means — and details that demonstrate how Bush simply doesn’t get the the expectations of the right wing of what should be his base (disclosure: I am a card-carrying member of the far right wing of what should be his base).
Bush starts by quoting important statistics from various think tanks and agencies: the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s 2015 finding that the federal regulation imposes a $1.88T silent tax on the economy each year ($15,000 for each American family) and the World Bank’s ranking of the United States’ 46th in terms of ease starting a business. He then does a very nice job characterizing the crony capitalist nature of the regulatory state:
These rules create a moat around America’s wealthiest and well-connected. They can afford to comply and absorb the costs. The burden of meeting the new rules’ requirements falls heaviest on everyone else though higher prices. And if a business can’t pass on the cost of the new rules to consumers, it just cuts wages or jobs.
This is sound reasoning and Bush deserves props for recognizing how the regulatory state helps his primary donor base to the detriment of others.
But he then makes some wild assertions about how his reforms will add three percentage points to our GDP by 2025. Combine that with Paul Ryan’s pie-in-the-sky 4%+ growth projections and all problems can (apparently) be solved while figuring out how to service national debt in excess of GDP.
So what isn’t to like? Bush’s prescription for dealing with the problem:
My administration will create a commission charged with reviewing regulations from the perspective of the regulated and shifting more power from Congress back to the states.
The solution for too much government is … more government. Quick, round up a commission! At least he hasn’t called it a blue ribbon panel yet. The quote above demonstrates Bush’s lack of understanding of the problem. It isn’t that Congress has too much power that should be devolved to the states; it’s that Congress has abdicated its responsibilities to the executive, in the form of agencies not accountable to voters or those they seek to regulate. Sen. Mike Lee does a great job summarizing this in his latest book.
Then, finally, Bush confirms what we already know about his brand of conservatism:
In my administration, every regulation, including those issued by the so-called independent agencies such as the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau [CFPB] will have to satisfy a rigorous White House review process, including cost benefit analysis.
This sums up his position nicely. The CFPB — a brain child of Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama — will have to submit its regulatory proposals to a White House commission for cost/benefit analysis. Sigh. The problem in America isn’t the lack of oversight over the CFPB and similar agencies, or that their regulations don’t pass review; the problem in America is that these agencies exist at all.
Bush confirms what the base has long suspected the Republican donor class strategy to be:
- The Democrats will build it. Warren/Obama CFPB, etc.
- The Republicans will fund it. We can’t possibly not raise the debt ceiling (insert wailing and gnashing of teeth). We must borrow from our children’s future to fund that which democrats have built.
- Republicans will subsequently ride to the rescue of the program. We will create a commission (more government) to manage the regulatory, bureaucracy, and welfare state better than the Democrats who created it, but will never repeal or eliminate anything.
Jeb Bush is a bright man of high integrity who just does not get it.
Published in Domestic Policy, Politics
Brent,
What would be your preferred method for a President to rollback the regulatory state?
I realize that Bush’s articulated plan smacks of big government nanny-ism (another commission, really?) but as President this plan is basically all that is within the Presidents power. Re: regulating the CPFB and other independent agencies – the President has no power to abolish them via executive order so I see this plan as at least a step in checking their ridiculous power.
In the end giving these powers back to the states is a much better idea than most that have been proposed – it was the way the founders intended it after all.
Except the plan he articulates here is one that intends to reduce the regulations that benefit him and his class at the expense of the nation. So I guess I don’t see how you got to this statement based on the WSJ piece.
I agree the President doesn’t have the ability to abolish the agencies. However, most of them come under the guise of the Executive Branch.
Congress empowers (ducks its responsibility) these bureaucracies to set standards, rules, and limitations and to enforce the same including monetary penalties.
The specifics of each of these are generated by the bureaucrats within the agency not Congress. In that these agencies are within the executive the President should have the prerogative to abolish any standards, limits, regulations, or penalties not specifically enacted via the legislative process.
Recent EPA restrictions are a good example Congress passed the Clean Air Act, but EPA with political motivation from POTUS set the actual standards and timetable for implementation. Congress should’ve set those. Of course that would likely never happen and that is the point.
And isn’t this what his commission is intended to accomplish?
Brent,
You have made excellent points here. Even if Jeb! turns out to be a de-regulating, tax-cutting, free marketeer, he ‘s still leaving an infrastructure in place to enable abuse by the next leftist that occupies the White House.
The ratchet clicks again.
Still, it’s better than the Romney plan. And his tax plan is better than Rubio’s.
I’m waiting to see what the other candidates come up with.
Sadly, one candidate that was willing to shut down government agencies (two or three agencies, depending) has dropped out of the race.
We have a global economy that changes every day everywhere in ways we can’t know a priori and we propose to police it from Washington by folks who cant know what is going on because by the time they collect the relevant data the world has changed, and the data arrives as averages which have lost most important information. The folks who do this aren’t accountable to most of the business they regulate, to the Congress that gave them the authority to fill in all the rules, to the heads of the executive branch that are supposed to oversee them and certainly not the tax payers and voters. Maybe we should toss the whole regulatory apparatus, like we should do with the tax code and replace it with some simple laws that are knowable, passed by voice vote by the Congress not by regulatory bureaucrats as they huddle with the regulated industry. In banking I have heard relevant proposals of how this might be done, but not the EPA, and most of the others. I’m not sure most of the regulations don’t do more harm than good, but I’m not in business nor do I follow any particular sector. What say those who know specific industries and the regulatory regimes that burden them.
No, the point is that the regulations should be specifically legislated by Congress so that every 2 years the House and 1/3 of the Senate have to stand for election and be accountable for the specifics.
He does mention rolling back some of Obama’s regs.
A commission? How about busting up crony capitalism with RICO statutes? How about jail for cooking the books at the EPA? How about some penalty for the behavior of these out of control agencies? How about at least firing every manager at every regulatory agency?
Until federal employees start becoming subject to penalty for their behavior, this will continue.
Jeb! just. does. not. get. it.
He is far more dangerous to my grandchildren than any other candidate.
Amen!
Deregulation was one of the key components of the Reagan Revolution which included tax reform to reduce marginal rates. Deregulation was led from the White House which is why it was effective decreasing the regulatory road blocks the Federal Bureaucracies put in place stifling business creation and growth.
Leaders like Reagan act directly to solve problems. Those with no leadership traits appoint commissions which provide only the appearance of action and then shrug their shoulders at the lack results.
Jeb has promised us another commission which will protect Jeb from criticism as the federal behemoth continues it’s gargantuan expansion. Jeb is a bureaucrat not a leader.
4% growth is not a pipe dream. The Clinton years averaged 4% growth, though the credit doesn’t really belong to him.
A deep recession at the beginning of the Reagan administration, pulled his average down to 2.8%. The seven years of recovery averaged 7.1 %.
Had Obama simply left the economy alone, his growth rate might have exceeded 4%, since this “recovery” began shortly after he took office.
Let’s not buy into the 2% or less “new normal” … uh … stuff.
Those are good statistics and all took place with debt:GDP much less than 1.0.
The Reagan growth came from a massive tax and regulatory reform, not just trimming around the edges that we have proposed in 2015. Additionally, that decade benefitted from the big reduction in fed funds rate after the 1980-81 shock therapy.
The Clinton admin benefitted from the dot com mania.
I think those conditions will be hard to replicate, especially starting from ZIRP.
In other words, Jeb! has promised to do nothing at all that will threaten the status quo, his donors, or the leftist bureaucrats who actually rule the nation.
Someone throw him a treat, because this sort of thing was exactly why he was plucked out of his sinecure to be the establishment candidate for preezy.
I expect nothing less from Jeb!- and nothing more.
I think there are some of the recent EPA changes he can reverse, but besides that I do not get the impression he understands the gravity of the problem.
Yeah but none of that is within the power of the executive. What is within their power is to rollback existing regulation from the bureaucracy. Jeb has proposed a mechanism for that.
What exactly should he have proposed the President do that would satisfy you?
The issue isn’t what caused the high growth rates before as much as what is preventing them now.
Starting with Bush 43, we had a massive increase in the growth rate of government (both in spending and regulation) and a substantial devaluation of the dollar.
Starting with Bush, policies the changed and the economy changed.
We’re a little under 2 percent growth right now. What would the growth rate be if Bush and Obama hadn’t done those things?
I don’t think anyone in the political class understands the gravity of the problem, alas.
The popularity of Donald Trump should have been a wake-up call, but it doesn’t seem to have registered.
I’m sorry, how exactly is the popularity of one of the greatest crony capitalists and abusers of government regulation supposed to be a wake-up call about the dangers of crony capitalism and regulation?
Can you please articulate the problem that Trump is supposed to solve?
Obama is widely denounced as a king because of his endless executive edicts that brazenly overrule Congress and shred the Constitution- yet a Republican president can do nothing more than slightly degrade disastrous EPA decrees? Really?
No offense but once again I’m reminded of Mark Steyn’s jab about the party of why nothing can be done.
And I’m sure under Jeb! nothing will be done, either.
To pick one tiny example, Jeb! could have denounced the CFPB as a worthless unconstitutional bureaucracy that protects no one. But that would require some to ability to motivate people to stay engaged long enough to listen to some explanation, which is an ability he plainly does not possess.
Of course if he was going to make that case against the CFPB then a lot else follows from it, which would absolutely upset the status quo of American governance, which is something the establishment is absolutely unwilling to do.
Hence, their choice of Jeb! the penultimate establishment figure.
So rather than having him propose actual mechanisms for rolling back the regulatory state you would be satisfied with a rant on an issue he actually has no power over.
But it is sure not another commission. For once, I’d like to see someone actually zero out the budget on a couple hundred of the alphabet departments each year for four or five years.
Congress should switch back to zero based budgeting, not this you start with what you had last year. Every year, every budget is zero until congress appropriates money, and every appropriation has a suspense date, and if it isn’t spent by then, the appropriation and authority to spend the dollars goes away.
And what candidates are taking a different approach? Cruz and to a much lesser extent, Trump. Fiorna is talking about the same stuff Bush is, only doing her bulldog PR approach. Same dogfood, different label. Rubio? He’s Babalu Bush. Cruz is the only one going “Kill it with fire”. Trump hasn’t said what he’d do about regulation… he IS the “You Had One Job” candidate, after all… but I really doubt he’d take this study committee approach either.
I think the rate of growth would be higher, but I am not sure if gross GDP would be higher. I wish we hadn’t done TARP, GM, Stimulus, etc. and let many of those enterprises fail. The pain would’ve been excruciating, the recession deeper and much shorter.
The growth from the bottom of the recession would’ve been very good in your scenario.
The issue now is debt:GDP>1, primarily financed short-term, and raising rates with growth.
I think you’ll find those last points on Hillary’s Liberty Medal.
“Which candidates, not what candidates”
— Sincerely,
Your new, improved, obnoxious kill it with fire Editor In Thief.
Jamie:
“I’m sorry, how exactly is the popularity of one of the greatest crony capitalists and abusers of government regulation supposed to be a wake-up call about the dangers of crony capitalism and regulation?”
—
Is this an honest question, or more of your forcible Socratization?
I shouldn’t be on my phone.. about to go back into synagogue, but wanted to say the post right on. The CFBP issue is a joke. Remember, it was conceived by Chris Dodd and movie theatre patron Barney Frank. Asking CFPB to be the arbiter of regulations is like… well, I’m too hungry to come up with a witty metaphor, but you get it.
Does the plan call for the CFPB to be the arbiter?