Even as his administration continues to press forward with a slew of new regulations, President Obama acknowledged Wednesday he agrees with Republicans that the government burdens industry with too much red tape.
“The Republicans … are about 25 percent right when it comes to regulatory burden,” Mr. Obama told business leaders in Washington. “You have regulations that are poorly written. You’ve got regulations that are not properly synced up so that you have different agencies with different responsibilities, and so compliance costs end up skyrocketing. You have regulations that squash innovation.”
Mr. Obama also gave a blunt assessment about the gap between America’s infrastructure and what he witnessed during his recent trip to China.
“The one thing I will say is if they need to build some stuff, they can build it,” Mr. Obama said of Beijing. “And over time, that wears away our advantage competitively. It’s embarrassing. You know, you drive down the roads and you look at what they’re able to do.”
He added that the conference center where the summit was held near Beijing “probably put most of the conference centers here to shame. They had built it in a year.”
Seeming to realize that he was perhaps too effusive in his praise of the communist nation, Mr. Obama later said, “I am absolutely confident we’ve got better cards than China does. And I’d much rather have our problems than China’s problems.”
A report last week by the Congressional Research Service showed that businesses have been hit with nearly 50 percent more “economically significant” regulations under Mr. Obama than under the presidency of George W. Bush.
Mr. Obama has issued 406 of these regulations, estimated to cost businesses more than $100 million per year, over his first six years in office — an average of 68 per year. Mr. Bush issued 277 such regulations over his first six years in office, for an average of 46 annually.
The number of final rules has declined slightly, from 3,830 in 2008 to 3,659 last year.
Mr. Obama has had an estranged relationship with corporate America, which has objected vehemently at times to his regulatory agenda, including the Affordable Care Act and stricter carbon emission rules announced last month for power plants.
The president met one on one Wednesday afternoon at the White House with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who has accused the administration’s environmental regulations of devastating the coal industry in his home state of Kentucky.
The administration has a goal of slashing power plants’ carbon emissions 30 percent by 2030.
One business leader from a power company at the quarterly meeting of the Business Roundtable asked the president what he intends to do about “this regulatory burden that in fact makes us all uncompetitive.”
Mr. Obama said he understands that the power plant goal means “a big expense for a lot of companies,” but added that his administration is trying to weed out obsolete regulations and ensure that new rules are more flexible for businesses.
“We’re spending a lot of time on the regulatory look-back process, digging back into old rules and seeing what [ones] don’t make sense,” the president said. “We are open to common sense.”
Referring to GOP control of the Senate and increased majority in the House in the next Congress, Mr. Obama said he wants to work with Republicans on tax policy, trade, infrastructure spending and immigration.
“There remains enormous areas of potential bipartisan action,” the president said. “There are some common-sense things that we should be doing that we’re not doing. The reason primarily is because of politics and ideological gridlock. One of the habits that this town has to break is this notion that if you disagree on one thing, then suddenly everybody takes their ball home and they don’t play.”
Some Americans have criticized Mr. Obama for striking a deal on carbon emissions last month with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The nonbinding pact would require the U.S. to cut greenhouse gases even more drastically than it had pledged, while China would set a target of capping its emissions after 15 years or so.
Mr. Obama touted his “significant deliverables” on his trip and spoke glowingly about Mr. Xi and China’s “can-do” spirit.
“Everybody’s been impressed by his — you know, his — his clout inside of China after only a year and a half or two years,” Mr. Obama said of Mr. Xi. “He has consolidated power faster and more comprehensively than probably anybody since Deng Xiaoping [China’s leader from 1978 to 1992].”
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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