OPINION:
It’s spanking time. President Donald Trump, yet again, has sent another Barack Obama-era rule and regulation a-packing.
This one? An environmental atrocity.
Obama, in November 2015, signed an executive order that required a reel-back of greenhouse gas emissions by the federal government to the tune of 41.8 percent by 2025 — and that’s a reduction from 2008 levels.
“These emission targets are a key piece of President Obama’s Executive Order 13693 on Planning for Federal Sustainability in the Next Decade,” the Obama White House said, back in November 2015.
But Trump just said no, no, no, not in my house.
In his own executive order, released this week, Trump told feds to never mind that Obama-era foolishness and instead “prioritize actions that reduce waste, cut costs, enhance the resilience of Federal infrastructure and operations, and enable more effective accomplishment of its mission,” the Hill reported.
What a concept: common sense.
The repeal sends this message: When it comes to environmentalism, no zealots need apply.
My, what a refreshing switcharoo from the previous White House, the members of whom seemed to have prided themselves on reaching the next level of regulatory control with each and every executively issued environmental order.
Obama viewed his greenhouse gas dictate to federal agencies as a cornerstone provision of his overall pollution control package for the entire country, the one that critics said would reel back the economy and gross domestic production by double-digit percentages — all the while hiking energy costs on consumers.
And boy, did it.
“President Obama Keeps His Promise: Electricity Rates Will Skyrocket Because of Carbon Rules,” read one U.S. Chamber of Commerce headline in mid-2015.
Well, it’s a new day in D.C., one that not only said “buh-bye” to Obama, but now, happily, “buh-bye” to all the environmental worshipers at his White House gates.
The New York Times wrote a piece in May 2017 that was entitled, “23 Environmental Rules Rolled Back in Trump’s First 100 Days.”
That was followed by another from the same newspaper in January entitled “67 Environmental Rules on the Way Out Under Trump.”
It was written with a tone toward critical.
“Regulations have often been reversed as a direct response to petitions from oil, coal and gas companies and other industry groups, which have enjoyed a much closer relationship with key figures in the Trump administration than under President Barack Obama,” the piece snarked.
But really, the same could be said in the reverse.
Obama certainly had his close relations with members of the Green industry who whispered into existence most of the environmental chains that slowed American’s economic growth during his eight years of presidency — the same chains Trump is now steadily breaking.
The same regulatory burdens Trump is now relaxing.
It may take time for the full benefits to be realized, but generally speaking, less federal regulation is typically a good thing for the little guy. It almost always brings more freedom, less control, lower costs and larger economic production. It almost always moves the country toward the direction of the Constitution, toward the Founding Fathers’ vision of limited government, as based on God-given rights to the individual.
So when it comes to Obama’s environmental fanaticism and the costly rules and regulations his personal views inflicted on this nation? Simply put, spank away, Team Trump. Spank away.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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