In his post-election analysis, Sen. James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, lays out the Obama administration’s job-killing regulatory agenda that will soon take center stage in the president’s anti-prosperity agenda.
I am particularly concerned about the administration’s efforts squash natural gas production. Today the Obama administration – through no less than fourteen federal agencies, including the EPA, the Department of Energy (DOE), the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) – is working to find ways to regulate hydraulic fracturing at the federal level, so that they can limit and eventually stop the practice altogether.
This regulatory onslaught will hammer hard working American families. Thanks to a recent report from National Economic Research Associates (NERA), we have more insight into just how devastating these regulations will be for American families. According to NERA, they will destroy up to 887,000 jobs per year, hitting coal regions the hardest. In fact, peak year losses in family income in coal country would range up to $1,600 per household.
Now for the hopeful news. Here in North Carolina, legislators are working to eliminate burdensome regulations and Gov.-elect McCrory has repeatedly talked about the need to strip away costly impediments to business and industry and, thus, job creation. That doesn’t mean throwing out everything. It simply means keeping a reasonable and appropriate regulatory framework to protect society from harms and threats that individuals cannot fend off themselves — but cleansing the state of the rest.
