Regulatory Reform - May 2017

Last Monday, the Obama administration’s Office of Surface Mining (OSMRE) issued its so-called Stream Protection Rule. This regulation, which the administration has been working on behind closed doors for six years, represents the logical culmination of this administration’s war on coal. This rule, if not overturned, would increase regulatory costs for coal mines to such an extent that candidate Obama’s promise to “bankrupt” coal companies will be largely achieved.

Just because President Obama’s legacy was defeated at the ballot box doesn’t mean that the regulator-in-chief is going to change. In the final weeks of his lame duck presidency, the Obama administration is hustling to complete as many new regulations as possible. This adds on to what is already the all-time record year for regulation based on page count. This continued regulatory aggression against the American people underlines why under this president the regulatory state has grown by an unprecedented amount.

Last week, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction halting the implementation of President Obama’s new overtime regulations. The regulations, previously scheduled to take effect on December 1st are a declaration of war on job flexibility and small employers, imposing new compliance costs and limiting employment arrangements in pursuit of big government social engineering. Given the large costs and dubious benefits, the Obama administration’s justifications for these massive, expensive, meddling regulations were always suspect as policy matter, but now a federal judge has agreed with the 21 states challenging the regulations and recognized them as probably illegal as well.