The President and his friends see their time in power waning and are hellbent on “fundamentally transforming the nation.”
Groups that closely follow regulations are expecting the Obama administration to continue issuing controversial rules through the midterm elections, despite the political risk it could pose for Democrats.
With time running out on President Obama’s second term, federal agencies are hitting the gas on a number of regulatory initiatives that are central to the White House’s “go-it-alone†agenda.
The pace of rulemaking is a stark contrast from the months leading up to the 2012 presidential election, when the flow of rules came screeching to a near halt.
The expectation that the gears of the regulatory process will keep moving highlights how the president’s desire for a second-term legacy sometimes conflicts with the short-term political considerations of congressional Democrats.
“We can’t underestimate the role politics plays in regulatory decisions,†said Stuart Shapiro, a former staffer at the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, who is now an associate professor at Rutgers University. “It’s important to remember that at the heart of regulations are political decisions.â€
When your policies are so unpopular that half of the nation won’t abide by them, you have to harbor them in thousands of words of bureaucratic nonsense and hope that they aren’t found for a while.
I’m sure that the left will consider any reversals to these oncoming regulations just as legal as the method used to install them, right?