The Hill News

The House is moving forward with three bills that would cripple the regulatory system.  The bills are not going to become law this Congress, but they show how far a party in thrall to its right-most wing is willing to veer from what has long been the mainstream.  The critical question is whether and when more moderate voices â€" centrist Republicans in Congress, sensible business leaders and the largely centrist American public â€" will recognize the damage being done and raise their voices to call it to a halt.  Clearly, that’s not going to happen in the House itself.
           
No one would argue that the regulatory system is perfect or that it’s some holy apparatus from which mere lawmakers should keep their distance.  But overall, it accomplishes what Congress set it up to do â€" it protects the public, produces benefits that outweigh costs, and has, according to most studies, a neutral to slightly positive effect on employment.  And ! as we continue to suffer through a bank-induced recession, it shouldn’t take leaps of imagination to understand the harm inflicted when the system fails to do its job.
          
Yet the bills before the House would prevent the system from working: they are a recipe for failure.  The bills are sometimes described with the mild term “regulatory reform” but these measures have as much to do with reform as Communist re-education camps had to do with education.  

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