With two years remaining in President Obama’s term in office, the new Republican Congress faces what can either be seen as a frustrating challenge or an opportunity. To be precise, Republicans now have power, yet they are as powerless to legislate as Obama wants to make them.
For example, Congress can pass measures like the Keystone Pipeline bill, as it did on Thursday, and send them to Obama’s desk. But Obama retains the veto power, making much of what the new Congress does an academic exercise.
This is not all a bad thing, though. The 2014 election has been widely read as a referendum on Obama, and not an indication that the public has warmed up to the Republican Party brand. The brand still needs to be defined and refined ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Fortunately, the legislative product of the new Congress — whether it is vetoed or not — can be used to that end.
Much of the current Congress will and should be spent crafting and creating a positive alternative vision for the nation to the Obama era.
Obama, now a negative force in Washington with his remaining veto authority, can block nearly anything he likes. But if he does it too often, he risks being perceived as the last remaining obstacle to many good and helpful ideas that would benefit the nation and serve the common good.
There are several such measures that fit that description, and we hope to examine and prescribe many of them over the next several months. The first is a much-needed regulatory reform measure that passed the U.S. House in the last Congress with unanimous Republican support and six additional votes from Democrats. The so-called REINS Act is designed to curb overregulation and excessive freelancing by the federal bureaucrats who are empowered to make specific rules for enforcing the laws that Congress passes.
In 2015, the total cost of the regulatory state will reach nearly $1.9 trillion, according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which outlines several ideas for regulatory reform in its agenda for the new Congress.
At times, bureaucrats go well past their statutory mandate and attempt to enforce laws in ways that weren’t originally intended. To give just one example, the mandate that all employers provide contraceptive coverage is nowhere in the Affordable Care Act law that Obama signed in 2010 — it was created by bureaucrats, and in fact Congress might not have passed the law if it had been contained therein.
The REINS Act would require an affirmative vote from both houses of Congress on any new regulations that are estimated to cost the U.S. economy more than $100 million. In the first five years of his presidency, Obama’s administration issued 157 such regulations that cost Americans about $73 billion annually, according to the Heritage Foundation’s James Gattuso and Diane Katz.
Regulators are not legislators. Regulations are supposed to be based on the laws that Congress passes. The REINS Act appropriately gives Congress a second bite at the apple – a chance to correct administrations that misconstrue their legislation with great consequence to the nation’s economic well-being.
This would make the regulatory process, which most Americans find completely opaque, far more democratic. It would discourage presidents (and one particular president comes to mind) from becoming too ambitious with economically painful executive actions. It’s also something nearly all Republicans and some Democrats agree on. The REINS Act deserves a vote at the earliest moment possible.
