Watchdog blasts Obama regulatory review as 'right out of the Republican hymnal'

A left-leaning watchdog group is fearful that President Obama’s new regulatory review initiative will weaken public health and environmental protections.

Rena Steinzor of the Center for Progressive Reform, citing Obama’s Wall Street Journal op-ed announcing the plan, said Obama “embraces a frame for the coming discussion about the role of regulation in society that is right out of the Republican hymnal.”

Her statement on the center's website Tuesday notes Obama’s claims that some regulations have stifled innovation and jobs, and noted his pledge to review “outdated” rules that stifle jobs and “make our economy less competitive.”

“By casting the discussion in those terms, the President swallows the GOP’s frame for the debate hook, line, and sinker,” writes Steinzor, the group’s president and a professor of law at the University of Maryland.

“If you listen carefully, you might hear the voices of disbelief and anguish from the families of the 11 workers  killed in the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the 29 workers whose lives were extinguished at the Big Branch mine, and the nine who died after eating peanut butter crackers and similar products infected by salmonella,” she writes.

Steinzor fears that the new plan will force the Environmental Protection Agency and other departments to cede power to Cass Sunstein, the administrator of the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, who is distrusted by some progressives.

“As for the argument that we need to loosen regulation in order to create jobs, the believers in this superficially appealing bit of dogma have yet to cite research showing that regulations are slowing the economic recovery,” Steinzor writes.

She adds: “They just serve up the assertion, in part to distract us from the hard reality that it was deregulatory fervor that got us into this mess in the first place. And while President Obama may not accept it, he’s apparently willing to let the debate be conducted in those terms.”

Obama’s executive order issued Tuesday calls for ensuring that agencies develop rules that protect the environment, public health and safety while “promoting economic growth, innovation, competitiveness, and job creation.”

It also demands that agencies conduct “retrospective analyses” of existing rules that may be outmoded or too burdensome, and “modify, streamline, expand, or repeal them in accordance with what has been learned.”