Obama Takes Aim at Regulation as GOP Targets Health Care Law

To regulate or not to regulate?

That is the question President Barack Obama is ordering every federal agency and office to ask in a government-wide review aimed at eliminating rules on the books that are outdated, stifle job creation or make the U.S. economy less competitive.

But the initiative seems focused as much on politics as policy. It is the White House's latest bid to reach out to a business community that was one of its primary foes last year, and seems directed in part at co-opting a key Republican argument on the same day the new GOP majority in the House begins its own politically minded effort to repeal last year's health care law.

Writing in this morning's Wall Street Journal, Obama also offered a defense for regulations -- from child labor laws and the Clean Air Act to rules he pushed through Congress that protect consumers from hidden credit card fees and penalties -- that some Republicans want to abolish.

"Sometimes, those rules 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," the president wrote. "At other times, we have failed to meet our basic responsibility to protect the public interest, leading to disastrous consequences."

In a bid to "strike the right balance," Obama said he hopes the executive order signed today will "bring order to regulations that have become a patchwork of overlapping rules, the result of tinkering by administrations and legislators of both parties and the influence of special interests in Washington over decades."

Better for Business?

The order seemed likely to please the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, whose CEO, Thomas Donohue, was one of Obama's fiercest critics during the first half of the president's current term in office, frequently assailing the health care changes and tighter rules for Wall Street. Last week the chamber said it had invited Obama to discuss jobs and the economy, and that the president would be coming there Feb. 7.

Though there was no immediate response from the chamber today, Donohue had listed restraint and reform of government regulations at the top of his proposals to foster economic growth this year.

Congressional Republicans were quick to welcome Obama's order.

Rep. Darrell Issa of California, who as chairman of the House oversight committee has promised a host of investigations into the Obama administration and invited businesses to suggest government regulations that should be repealed, said he applauded Obama's "effort that stretches beyond ideological entrenchments."

"It's in the interest of every American that we create a modern regulatory environment that fosters economic growth and makes U.S. companies globally competitive," Issa said. "I look forward to providing the president with insights gained from our current effort to hear directly from job creators about what they perceive as barriers standing in the way of their ability to create jobs."

Eric Cantor of Virginia, the No. 2 Republican in the House, said Obama was using an idea he had proposed more than a year ago, but that the move was no less welcome for that.

"Today's executive order from President Obama shows that he heard the same message I did in the last election: that Americans are sick and tired of Washington's excessive overreach and overspending," Cantor said.

Return to the Health Care Wars

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters the executive order had been in the works for months and wasn't tied to the health care debate about to start again in the House.

But it coincides with a major administration push to defend the "Affordable Care Act" from what Republicans have officially dubbed the "Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act" -- a measure expected to pass in the House but not in the Senate.

As part of that effort, the Department of Health and Human Services today released a new analysis saying up to 129 million Americans younger than 65 have a pre-existing medical condition that would make them ineligible for insurance coverage or subject to significantly higher premiums without the protections of the new health care law.

Obama also used health care as an example of how businesses will be participating more in the regulatory process, saying the Food and Drug Administration will announce Wednesday "a new effort to improve the process for approving medical devices, to keep patients safer while getting innovative and life-saving products to market faster."

And accompanying the executive order is a memorandum to federal agencies ordering them to write rules with more input from businesses and citizens in an effort to get rid of "absurd and unnecessary paperwork," and to make the regulatory process more transparent.