The Regulatory Review’s five-part series on Romney’s regulatory plan features unique commentary by legal experts on regulation and administrative law.
As the United States’ general presidential campaign heats up, competing visions of regulation’s impact on the national economy define the race ahead. The presumptive Republican nominee, Governor Mitt Romney, has consistently sounded the refrain of regulatory reform, blaming the Obama Administration’s regulatory policies for impeding economic recovery.
President Obama, by contrast, has raised the alarm that, if elected, Romney would repeal environmental, health, and financial regulations that deliver important benefits to the economy. Romney would, the President has predicted, “eliminate most regulations” and work to “roll back regulations designed to protect consumers and workers.”
Does Mitt Romney’s regulatory plan truly present a serious danger to economic and public welfare? Or does it instead offer the nation a chance for a deliverance from sustained unemployment and economic malaise?
To illuminate Romney’s plan — what it contains, promises, and would deliver — The Regulatory Review has invited distinguished scholars of regulation and administrative law to comment on the regulatory policy section of Governor Romney’s economic plan, Believe In America: Mitt Romney’s Plan for Jobs and Economic Growth.
With regulation figuring as a core point of contention between the two presidential candidates, The Regulatory Review is pleased to present a special series on Romney’s regulatory plan. Each essay features a scholar’s commentary on Romney’s regulatory plan and the legal and policy issues it raises.
Romney’s Regulatory Agenda – Right Turn?
, Former Dean, Boston University School of Law
“Presidential campaign documents seldom read like carefully crafted scholarly work. ….The relevant question in evaluating such documents is not whether they offer precise and well-crafted specifics but whether they offer sensible direction dressed in a politically attractive package…”
From Rhetoric to Action
“Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney has promised to restrain the cost and scope of federal regulation if elected president. … His campaign promises a ‘day one’ executive order that would direct federal agencies ‘to immediately initiate the elimination of Obama-era regulations that unduly burden the economy or job creation’ and to cap ‘annual increases in regulatory costs at zero dollars.'”
Romney’s Regulatory Policy?
“It is probably too much to expect of Presidential campaigns to put forth programs that are honest and meaningful, so one should not be surprised that the recent release of Mitt Romney’s Plan for Jobs and Economic Growth falls squarely within the realm of campaign bluster rather than real answers.”
Strong Politics, Weak Prospects
“Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney’s blueprint, Believe in America: Mitt Romney’s Plan for Jobs and Economic Growth, includes some familiar Republican proposals for regulatory reform. Given the centrality of the economy to the 2012 campaign, it is not surprising that Romney’s ideas for regulatory policy focus on the economic costs of federal regulation.”
The First Step: Let’s Kill All the Regulations
“Governor Mitt Romney shares his vision for America’s economic future in Believe in America: Mitt Romney’s Plan for Jobs and Economic Growth. … Were the proposals…ever implemented, they would end the regulatory state as we know it.”
