If the first step is admitting you have a problem, then President Obama may have begun rehabilitating his presidency last Friday when he announced that his administration was rescinding proposed ozone regulations that the Environmental Protection Agency estimated would cost the U.S. economy $90 billion a year. Obama’s announcement came just hours after the latest Labor Department jobs report showed the unemployment rate unchanged at 9.1 percent after the economy added zero jobs in August.
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In a conference call following the announcement, a senior White House official insisted that Obama’s decision “has nothing to do with politics.” We hope that is not true. We hope that the pressure of near-double-digit unemployment, 32 months after Obama passed his $820 billion stimulus package, is forcing Obama to put job creation ahead of the whims of the environmental movement.
When the enviro-leftists scream, put in earplugs because there is no concern that Obama’s decision will harm the air you breathe. The Environmental Protection Agency is still regulating ozone levels, a major contributor to smog, in accordance with standards that the Bush EPA established in 2008. By law the EPA must review its National Ambient Air Quality Standards for air pollutants every five years, so Obama EPA’s decision to issue new standards 2 1/2 years early was mystifying.
Perhaps he has learned his lesson. As encouraging as this decision is, Obama’s explanation for it was even better. He said he decided to rescind the proposed regulations because of “the importance of reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover.”
It is a huge step for Obama to admit that his regulatory agenda is creating burdens and uncertainty for job creators. This is the president who once blithely quipped, “You know, the business community is always complaining about regulations.” But Friday’s decision can only be viewed positively if it is indeed a first step.
There are still six other proposed regulations from the EPA that would cost the economy dearly. According to the EPA’s own estimates, the cost to small businesses for obtaining carbon emission permits alone would be $76 billion per year, not including the hundreds of billions of dollars in widespread economic damage from higher energy prices.
If Obama really wanted to remove “regulatory uncertainty” from the economy, he would use his Thursday jobs speech to announce that he is ordering EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to halt all of her agency’s work on global warming regulations.
