Usually, the opposition attempt to frame the State of the Union speech comes after the President gives it in the official response, but Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) decided to get a head start. Barack Obama is widely expected to call for a consensus approach to governance with the House controlled by Republicans, but Inhofe gently reminds America that Obama hasn’t tried that approach on regulatory adventurism. Inhofe delivers what could be called a State of the Bureaucracy address, and asks Obama to get back to balance by reining in his EPA:
The President will also focus on jobs, and various approaches to get Americans back to work. I hope the President addresses the flood of regulations coming from EPA-put simply, they threaten jobs and jobs creation.
The President could find common ground with Republicans if he pledges to bring those rules back into balance. Right now, they pose a dangerous threat to the competitiveness of manufacturers and small businesses, particularly in America’s Heartland.
In just two years, the Obama Administration has put every institution that has made America great under attack: the military, health care, agriculture, the financial sector-all are feeling the brunt of the Administration’s liberal agenda.
I will say here very clearly: if the President doesn’t heed calls for change in his regulatory policies, then Congress will have to change them.
We will start with EPA’s backdoor attempt to impose cap-and-trade taxes on consumers and employers. The President failed to pass this agenda in Congress-too many members understood its destructive costs and negligible benefits. Now he’s using the EPA and the Clean Air Act to make it happen.
Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) once referred to EPA’s global warming agenda as “a glorious mess.” He was right. EPA regulation could cover 260,000 office buildings, 150,000 warehouses, 92,000 health-care facilities, 71,000 hotels and motels, 51,000 food-service facilities, 37,000 churches, and 17,000 farms. And what is the result? By EPA’s estimates, global mean temperature would drop about one-hundredth of a degree by 2100.
The cost-benefit analysis here is fairly straightforward. And so is answer to this glorious mess: repeal it.
The sudden departure of climate-change czar Carole Browner offers a timely test of Obama’s new centrism. If Obama picks another czar to take her place, then we’ll know that his SOTU pledge for consensus meant that Republicans should just agree with him. If the post remains vacant, it may demonstrate that Obama understands that his strategy of regulatory adventurism is a dead letter, and might antagonize Republicans enough to result in deep cuts at EPA that go beyond his attempts to impose global-warming regulation through end runs around Congress.
Inhofe does a good job of framing tonight’s speech on regulation and these bureaucratic end-runs. Hopefully it results in tuning ears to those particular notes within Obama’s speech.
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