GEORGE WILL THINKS THE GOP’S WIN IS A GO-AHEAD FOR SLASH & BURN

 

…George Will, on his favorite cable network

This conservatives thinks that the mid-terms were the signal to rid the nation of reasonable regulations.

According to that bastion of conservatism, Mr. George Will, if the new Republican run legislature were to follow his lead, the United States would be back into the same system of royalty and serfs that caused the original pilgrims to leave England in the 1700’s.

Per Mr. Will, even though throughout President Obama’s two terms, all the Republicans have had to offer the American public was to say “No” to everything.  Mr. Will now says , “…Republicans know what to do with what they have caught”, this is referring to the Republicans knowing what to do with their new power in both Houses of Congress. 

 

Right!

Then Mr. Will lists the following six items that should be first on the GOP’s list of their possible policy changes:

·       Abolish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

This is the organization that was spearheaded by the now Senior Senator of Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, and as an example, has been solely responsible for bringing the nations bank’s credit card policies back to some level of fairness.  Mr. Will would apparently like the banks to have absolutely no regulation.  Gee, and that worked so well in 2007 / 2008.

·       Repeal the ACA’s Independent Payment Advisory Board.

This is the Obamacare’s board that has no actual power and the board can be abolished after 2017.  The board is currently 15 presidential appointees that make recommendations for dealing with helping to lower Medicare’s spending, of which those costs had been skyrocketing.  Those costs are now slowly coming down.

·       Repeal the Affordable Care Act’s tax on medical devices.

Mr. Will says: “This $29 billion blow to an industry that provides more than 400,000 jobs.”  Yes, it is also one of the fastest growing and most profitable US manufacturing industries.  Please also note, this tax does nothing to slow down the increase in the industry’s jobs.  Mr. Will says the tax “…is levied not on a firms’ profits but on gross revenues, and it comes on top of the developed world’s highest corporate income tax”.  What he fails to tell you is that there are so many loop-holes in the US Income Tax Code that the actual paid tax rate in the US is lower than that of most developed countries.  As an example, the US corporate income tax rate is listed as being over 34%, but the actual paid percentage average is between 17% & 19%.  (Due to all the loop-holes, even Mitt Romney’s personal income tax rate was only 12%.)

·       Authorize construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.

This is not a jobs project as they keep saying.  Only 2000 construction jobs for 2 years, 50 to 100 permanent jobs after that.  In addition, this pipeline would be carrying the very dirtiest of oils, shale oil, and it would be crossing aquifers in the mid-western states that any dirty-oil pipeline leak could ruin thousands of acres of land for hundreds of years.  Just look at the past Gulf of Mexico oil leak.  That leak is still causing financial and environmental havoc and will do so for many years to come.  Now that the Senate is controlled by the Republicans, there may not be a way to stop this pipeline and we may need to just pray that no terrorists decide that the pipeline running across our mid-western plains are a good target.

·       Mandate completion of the nuclear waste repository in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain.

This is one with which I wholeheartedly agree.

 

…Inside Yucca Mountain Repository

·       Pass the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act.

Doing this would require that any regulation with at least a $100 million annual impact on the economy, would be approved without amendments by a joint resolution of Congress and signed by the president.  In other words, big, major expensive regulation impacts would be  “Fast-Tracked” through the approval process which would keep any questionable ones away from the same scrutiny that those regulations of less than $100 million now have to be reviewed.  Therefore, regardless of who it might effect, Mr. Will wants to rush these regulations through the committees and give it a quick stamp of approval.

In his final comments, I do agree with Mr. Will that Congress needs resuscitating and that they have been ceding too many legislative responsibilities to the executive branch.  Of course, the Republican-run Congress is doing this just so they do not have to assume any of the responsibilities or possibly the blame.  Typical.

Doing the changes that Mr. George Will suggests would just be the beginning of the “slippery slope” to even more problems, more income inequality and more stagnant pay and higher health care costs. 

It’s not worth it, but when the conservatives are running the show, historically, we all end up  paying the higher price!

Copyright G.Ater  2014