Regulatory Action Center Review - April 8, 2019

Welcome to FreedomWorks Foundation’s seventh regulatory review of 2019! Our Regulatory Action Center proudly updates you with our favorite tidbits from the swamp. We want to smash barriers between bureaucracy and the American people by delivering regulatory news straight to FreedomWorks activists. Check back in two weeks for the next edition.

1) Video of the Week: In this video, Don Parrish, the American Farm Bureau Federation’s senior director of regulatory relations explains why the “waters of the United States” (WOTUS) rule passed by the Obama administration hurts farmers and should be illegal. The Trump administration is currently considering rescinding this Obama-era regulation.

2) Why is Florida GOP Senator Rick Scott Copying Bernie Sanders on Socialized Medicine?: “Another fundamental problem with the Sanders and Scott bills is they completely ignore what prices, in any market including medicine, actually are and how they work. Prices are not just arbitrary figures. Prices are information signals. If you don’t like the price of something, just changing it will not solve the actual problems the prices are trying to highlight. In fact, tinkering with prices is likely to just create more problems. Price controls are essentially just the economic equivalent of fake news.” http://www.freedomworks.org/content/why-florida-gop-senator-rick-scott-copying-bernie-sanders-socialized-medicine

3) Don’t Turn Banks Into Regulated Utilities: “Ocasio-Cortez used the hearing room as a stage for her political theater. Unwittingly, though, she helped draw attention to a serious problem: Banks are already on the verge of being nationalized to fulfill the vision of politicians like Ocasio-Cortez.” https://www.heritage.org/markets-and-finance/commentary/dont-turn-banks-regulated-utilities

4) E-cigarette Use Strongly Associated with Smoking Cessation in Greece: “There is substantial progress in smoking cessation in Greece over the last few years since e-cigarettes became popular. A strong positive association was observed between current e-cigarette use and being a recent former smoker. This provides indirect evidence that the progress in smoking control could be at least partially attributed to the rising popularity and use of e-cigarettes.” https://www.realclearpublicaffairs.com/public_affairs/2019/01/31/e-cigarette_use_strongly_associated_with_recent_smoking_cessation_in_greece.html

5) Help Wanted – Seeking Commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration: “In a tidal wave of Washington drama, President Trump’s Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb abruptly and unexpectedly announced in March 2019 that he would be resigning. His reasons remain a source of mystery and speculation, but that means there’s a huge opportunity now to get a replacement who does better at adhering to the principles of FDA’s mission and improving the effectiveness of FDA policy across all programs.” https://cei.org/blog/help-wanted-seeking-commissioner-food-and-drug-administration

6) The Jones Act – A Drag on America’s Economy: “The Jones Act illustrates how protectionism creates dependent industries that then squander resources (ingenuity, money) on manipulating the government. The act also illustrates the asymmetry that explains much of what government does — the law of dispersed costs and concentrated benefits. The act’s likely annual costs to the economy (tens of billions) are too widely distributed to be much noticed; its benefits enrich a relative few, who use their ill-gotten profits to finance the defense of the government’s favoritism.” https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/jones-act-crony-capitalism-shipping-industry/