Following up on a draft released in May, the Obama administration Tuesday outlined federal rules changes that it says will save private businesses about $10 billion over five years.<\/p>\n
The changes include accelerating payments to 60,000 small businesses working on Defense contracts, and requiring the Small Business Administration to adopt a single electronic application for borrowers, Bloomberg News reports.<\/p>\n
The Department of Health and Human Services will work to remove some reporting requirements on hospitals and health-care providers to potentially save $4 billion over five years, according to White House spokesman Cass Sunstein.<\/p>\n
And rule revisions by the Energy Department may save makers of commercial appliances and bathroom shower heads as much as $900 million, according to the plan posted on the White House web site.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce welcomed the administration\u2019s initiative while saying it didn\u2019t go far enough.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis lookback will not have a material impact on the real regulatory burdens facing business,\u201d spokesman Bill Kovacs wrote on the Chamber\u2019s web site. Still, the plan is a \u201cworthy effort at making technical changes to the regulatory process,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Indeed, this is movement in the right direction, and the president is to be congratulated for acknowledging the regulatory environment is a big part of what\u2019s blocking more job creation. The question is whether this reflects any real change in the regulatory mind set, down the line.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile removing some modest burdens with this hand, with the other hand the administration is proposing new costly and unnecessarily burdensome rules that will wipe away all the savings that have been proposed today,\u201d observes Rosario Palmieri of the National Association of Manufacturers.<\/p>\n
He cited the Environmental Protection Agency\u2019s proposal to tighten ozone standards, saying it may cost the economy an additional $1 trillion annually between 2020 and 2030 and jeopardize 7.3 million jobs, calling it \u201cthe most costly rule that this administration has proposed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s look at just one example, those rule revisions by the Energy Department that reportedly \u201cmay save makers of commercial appliances and bathroom shower heads as much as $900 million.\u201d<\/p>\n
In July of 2010, the Wall Street Journal reported \u201cRegulators are going after some of the luxury shower fixtures that took off in the housing boom. Many have multiple nozzles … and emit as many as 12 gallons of water a minute. In May, the DOE stunned the plumbing-products industry when it said it would adopt a strict definition of the term \u2018shower head\u2019 in enforcing standards that have been on the books — but largely unenforced — for nearly 20 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
For years, each nozzle in a shower was considered separate and in compliance if it delivered no more than the 2.5-gallon maximum, the Journal reported. But in May, 2010, the DOE introduced a new interpretation under which all nozzles would count as a single shower head and be deemed noncompliant if, taken together, they exceed the 2.5 gallons-a-minute maximum.<\/p>\n
In May, 2010, the DOE fined four shower head makers $165,104 in civil penalties, alleging they failed to demonstrate compliance for some devices.<\/p>\n
Manufacturers and retailers warned the new rules also affect hand-held sprays used by the elderly and disabled. Multiple showerheads found in shower rooms at schools or gyms could also be at risk, manufacturers say.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid Congress limit consumer choice? Absolutely,\u201d DOE General Counsel Scott Blake Harris told the Journal.<\/p>\n
So what about the DOE shower-head rule change announced Tuesday?<\/p>\n
The agency has now decided to \u201cprovide an enforcement grace period of two years to allow such manufacturers to sell any remaining non-compliant products … in order to enforce the existing standards in a manner that avoids needless economic dislocation that some industry representatives estimated at $400 million.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not really a rule change, then, but a two-year grace period before those who spent time and money developing these successful products will have to lay off anyone still manufacturing, distributing or selling them.<\/p>\n
This despite the fact \u201cIt was not the legislative intent of Congress to authorize DOE to regulate the bathing habits of Americans,\u201d according to Frederick Desborough, vice president of California Faucets of Huntington Beach, Calif.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to believe the Founding Fathers contemplated a central government large and intrusive enough to regulate our toilets and our shower heads — fining and driving out of business not those whose products don\u2019t work, but rather those whose products work too well. And so long as Washington endeavors to do so, it\u2019s hard to work up high hopes for this administration\u2019s version of \u201cslashing the red tape.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Following up on a draft released in May, the Obama administration Tuesday outlined federal rules changes that it says will save private businesses about $10 billion over five years. The changes include accelerating payments to 60,000 small businesses working on Defense contracts, and requiring the Small Business Administration to adopt a single electronic application for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[42,17,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2012-election","category-big-brother","category-cleanliness"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-dA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=842"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":843,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842\/revisions\/843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}