The campaign for the return of common sense in the application of health, safety and environmental rules has made its way across the pond, with the announcement by Barack Obama that he is to get rid of regulations that are “just plain dumb”.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal yesterday (18 January) the US president pledged to “root out” laws that have “gotten out of balance, placing unreasonable burdens on business – burdens that have stifled innovation and have had a chilling effect on growth and jobs”.
To this end, Mr Obama has signed an executive order, which, he says, makes clear the need to strike a balance between freedom of commerce and applying rules that are necessary to protect the public from threats to their health and safety.
The order stipulates a government-wide review of existing legislation to remove outdated regulations, which, according to the president, “stifle job creation and make our economy less competitive”. Citing his own ‘conkers bonkers’ type example, Mr Obama criticised the US Environmental Protection Agency’s insistence that the artificial sweetener saccharin be treated as a dangerous chemical, saying: “If it goes in your coffee, it is not hazardous waste.”
According to reports in the American press, the announcement is widely seen as a move to appease the business lobby and conservative groups, which have accused President Obama of being anti-business. The ‘Tea Party’ movement of conservative Republicans has been actively campaigning against the EPA’s efforts to tackle climate change, while the US Chamber of Commerce has previously called for a halt to what it sees as “a move from a government of the people to a government of the regulators” under the Obama administration.
In a statement released after the WSJ piece, the US Chamber said: “Congress should reclaim some of the authority it has delegated to the agencies and implement effective checks and balances on agency power.”
However, liberal groups were scathing of the move. In a blog post on Obama’s piece, Rena Stenzor, president of the Center for Progressive Reform, suggested he was acting with one eye on the 2012 election. Recalling the 11 workers who died in the Deepwater Horizon disaster and the 29 who lost their lives in a coalmine collapse in West Virginia, both last April and “on Obama’s watch”, she said: “The families, friends, and co-workers of these victims of under-regulation and under-enforcement might conclude that the United States is reverting to a place where the government most definitely does not protect people who cannot protect themselves.”
As for those who believe the argument that lighter-touch regulation is needed to create jobs, Ms Stenzor concluded: “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.”
The government is already consulting business leaders on which regulations they find most onerous, while regulatory agencies have been directed to do more to account for and reduce the burdens on small businesses “to make sure nothing stands in their way”.
In 2009, the most recent year for which full statistics are available, 4340 Americans died at work.
