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sidereaSerious questions here.
"Classical liberal", libertarian and libertarian-leaning conservatives often complain about "government regulations" thwarting small businesses. And sometimes big businesses. That's... kind of like a core principle for them, often pontificated about.
Okay.
Can anybody point me at any examples of US conservatives/libertarians working towards the elimination of any government regulation in the last 20 years? Ideally successfully, but any effort of all is interesting.
To be very clear: things that don't count, include:
• Working to elect politicians who claim to be anti-regulations. You have to point at an actual bill or law or executive order or actual documented action they took.
• Working to reduce the power of government to make new regulations. That's something else. I'm looking for efforts to roll back extant regulations.
• Working to reduce government payouts or authority for things that aren't regulations, i.e. social support programs.
• Working to reduce the efficacy of regulation-enforcing bodies by starving them of resources or breaking stikes or otherwise indirectly attempting to allow more people/businesses to get away with breaking the law, as opposed to changing the law.
• Working to privatize government functions.
I'm looking for examples – the more, the merrier –of US conservatives/libertarians actually attempting to eliminate specific regulations from the law since 1995.
Why do I ask?
Two things. The second is that I hit up Wikipedia's page on Deregulation, and the US subsection has a subsubsection "Deregulation 1970-2000". There it stops. The only two items on its timeline in the last 20 years are Telecommunications Act PL 104-104 (1996) and Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act PL 106-102 (1999).
So, according to Wikipedia, basically conservatives stopped actually doing anything about regulation of industry about two decades ago. It sure seems like there are voters alive today who have never seen a conservative work towards removing regulations of any sort.
The first is yesterday's SCOTUS decision. The majority decision, which clipped the wings of a state licensure board for violating antitrust law, was written by Kennedy for himself, Roberts, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan.
Dissenting were Alito, Scalia, and Thomas.
Okay, there's a zeroth thing: I'm watching regulation do things in health care which are... not what I think any of us really want. But if I wanted to find a party or faction working to do something about that, where would I go? It sure looks like the laissez-faire right has gotten way into restraint of trade by regulations – not a huge surprise in that those candidates and organizations who present themselves as "pro-business" usually mean "bigger businesses over smaller ones", and the cleverest way to do that is multiply regulatory burden: larger businesses have the economics of scale to afford the wages of specialists to work to satisfy regulations which smaller businesses can't.
"Classical liberal", libertarian and libertarian-leaning conservatives often complain about "government regulations" thwarting small businesses. And sometimes big businesses. That's... kind of like a core principle for them, often pontificated about.
Okay.
Can anybody point me at any examples of US conservatives/libertarians working towards the elimination of any government regulation in the last 20 years? Ideally successfully, but any effort of all is interesting.
To be very clear: things that don't count, include:
• Working to elect politicians who claim to be anti-regulations. You have to point at an actual bill or law or executive order or actual documented action they took.
• Working to reduce the power of government to make new regulations. That's something else. I'm looking for efforts to roll back extant regulations.
• Working to reduce government payouts or authority for things that aren't regulations, i.e. social support programs.
• Working to reduce the efficacy of regulation-enforcing bodies by starving them of resources or breaking stikes or otherwise indirectly attempting to allow more people/businesses to get away with breaking the law, as opposed to changing the law.
• Working to privatize government functions.
I'm looking for examples – the more, the merrier –of US conservatives/libertarians actually attempting to eliminate specific regulations from the law since 1995.
Why do I ask?
Two things. The second is that I hit up Wikipedia's page on Deregulation, and the US subsection has a subsubsection "Deregulation 1970-2000". There it stops. The only two items on its timeline in the last 20 years are Telecommunications Act PL 104-104 (1996) and Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act PL 106-102 (1999).
So, according to Wikipedia, basically conservatives stopped actually doing anything about regulation of industry about two decades ago. It sure seems like there are voters alive today who have never seen a conservative work towards removing regulations of any sort.
The first is yesterday's SCOTUS decision. The majority decision, which clipped the wings of a state licensure board for violating antitrust law, was written by Kennedy for himself, Roberts, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan.
Dissenting were Alito, Scalia, and Thomas.
Okay, there's a zeroth thing: I'm watching regulation do things in health care which are... not what I think any of us really want. But if I wanted to find a party or faction working to do something about that, where would I go? It sure looks like the laissez-faire right has gotten way into restraint of trade by regulations – not a huge surprise in that those candidates and organizations who present themselves as "pro-business" usually mean "bigger businesses over smaller ones", and the cleverest way to do that is multiply regulatory burden: larger businesses have the economics of scale to afford the wages of specialists to work to satisfy regulations which smaller businesses can't.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-02-26 08:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-02-26 08:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-02-26 09:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-02-26 09:48 pm (UTC)http://news.sciencemag.org/environment/2014/11/environmentalists-scientists-fret-over-republican-bills-targeting-epa-science
I'm not sure this meets your criteria in that they seem to be trying to deregulate by regulating the data which can be used to make the regulations.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-02-26 11:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-02-27 04:09 am (UTC)How about the repeal of DADT? The (official) sponsor was a Blue Dog Democrat.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-02-27 11:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-02-27 12:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-02-28 05:18 am (UTC)examples of deregulation
Date: 2015-02-27 11:15 am (UTC)Well, there's always repealing Obamacare. Which would have lots of effects if it ever actually happened, but several of them amount to eliminating regulations: the employer mandate, the "take all comers" rule, the individual mandate, etc.
Or were you talking about deregulation efforts that actually succeeded, or stood a serious chance of succeeding?
Conservatives (and Wall Street-funded politicians of both parties) successfully prevented most of the proposed Wall Street reforms after 2008 from becoming law. That's not eliminating an existing regulation, but it succeeded.
And from
The irony, of course, is that these same state lawmakers claim they're trying to avoid "a patchwork of inconsistent local regulations that make it difficult for businesses to function," and are outraged when the Federal government passes a law to preempt state laws and regulations for exactly the same reason.
Re: examples of deregulation
Date: 2015-02-28 05:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-03-04 07:42 pm (UTC)The thing is, insofar as the Republican Party was ever "classical liberal" (which I personally shorthand as "agrees with The Economist"), that ceased to be the case at least a decade ago. In particular, while they still pay tons of lip service to free markets, that's not at all what they actually stand for -- by and large, they are corporatist to the hilt. It is notable that the only regulations they *actually* oppose are precisely the ones that cost Big Business and/or Wall Street money.
It's also worth noting, though, that deregulation is downright *hard*, which is why politicians tend to avoid it. Unwriting law is almost invariably more difficult than writing it, because you almost inevitably hit a brick wall of people catastrophizing all over the place, explaining how removing this law will be The End of Everything. (We hit that horribly even in the SCA, often with the most asinine rationalizations; it's even worse mundanely.)
(no subject)
Date: 2015-03-06 04:58 am (UTC)Well, YES. That's why I was all, "Hmm, who might have some experience actually doing this?"
(no subject)
Date: 2015-03-07 04:33 am (UTC)https://plus.google.com/116665417191671711571/posts/Uac4ntVXAmc
Easy: Glass Steagall repeal?
Date: 2015-03-18 03:37 am (UTC)How about the anti-trust laws?
The truth in advertising laws (which used to stop car ads from featuring flying cars and such like,) and dismantling of regulations prohibiting lawyers and doctors from advertising?
The, um, reform of the welfare system, (also Clinton) which has resulted in a massive transfer of poor onto permanent disability?
Re: Easy: Glass Steagall repeal?
Date: 2015-03-18 05:02 am (UTC)That's the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act PL 106-102 (1999) mentioned in the post.
How about the anti-trust laws?
You'll have to be more specific, I'm unfamiliar with changes there.
The truth in advertising laws (which used to stop car ads from featuring flying cars and such like,) and dismantling of regulations prohibiting lawyers and doctors from advertising?
Okay, this is fascinating, because I've lived through it and I know about nothing about it. Now, I'm under the impression that all happened in the 80s and 90s (and therefore well before the time-frame under consideration), but I'm still very curious about it. Do you know any more details to point my googling in a profitable direction?
ETA: Found this on wikipedia which indicates that advertising became legal for lawyers through a Supreme Court case in 1976. The grounds on which that decision was made -- first amendment -- would hold for doctors, too, but I don't know if there were any additional wrinkles there.
When did truth-in-advertising laws change?
The, um, reform of the welfare system
That, I think, does not involve change of regulations. Tell me if I'm wrong.