1. Scott Pruitt Will Bring Needed Balance to EPA - by Utah's Attorney General Sean Reyes via Deseret News
Before leaving private practice, I defended a large multinational
client against allegations of Clean Water Act violations brought by the
U.S. Department of Justice on behalf of the Environmental Protection
Agency. The EPA sought three remedies: (1) revocation of my client’s
ability to do business in the U.S., which would end all North American
operations, eliminating thousands of jobs and costing the American
economy hundreds of millions of dollars; (2) conviction of two corporate
employees at the lower management level, amounting to life imprisonment
given their age; and (3) record fines of tens of millions of dollars.
Given the fervor with which the EPA pursued the case, one would
imagine my clients had been guilty of heinous environmental atrocities.
Instead, the thrust of the EPA lawsuit alleged my client was polluting
local waterways, possibly affecting beaks and claws of waterfowl over
time due to trace amounts of selenium (by some calculations, that amount
was less than what the average person could ingest in a daily
multivitamin).
After years of litigation in which the EPA spent millions of
taxpayer dollars, my legal team proved in court that the agency was
relying on an erroneous standard, improperly permitted, as the basis for
its misguided persecution of this company. While we won, my client was
not reimbursed millions of dollars for legal fees due to the EPA’s
mistakes. There was no apology by the agency to families of two men who
spent years wondering if they would go to prison. And there was no
remorse for blighting the good name of an upstanding corporation. Read more here...
2. Let it Go: Obama Aides Work to Run ObamaCare Ads that Trump Cancelled - via The Washington Examiner
Republicans won control of the federal government on their promise
to repeal ObamaCare. A preliminary step toward that goal, President
Trump cancelled last minute ads encouraging people to sign up for the
healthcare law before the Jan. 31 deadline for enrollment.
But progressives are having a hard time letting go. Even as the law
sits on the chopping block, two Obama administration officials have
backed an effort to run the ads anyway.
Both Andy Slavitt, former administrator for the Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid, and Josh Peck, the Chief Marketing Officer for healthcare.gov, have partnered with DSPolitical to get the infomercials on air. Read more here...
3. 'One In, Two Out': Trump's Executive Order on New Regulations - via Competitive Enterprise Institute
Some years ago, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) proposed a way to slow the
growth of new regulations: one in, one out. If an agency wants to issue a
new regulation, fine. But it has to offset that burden by getting rid
of an equivalent dollar amount of existing regulations. With agencies
issuing more than 3,000 new regulations every year, there is merit to
the idea. President Trump is taking Sen. Warner’s idea one step further
with an executive order requiring a one-in, two-out policy, as he
promised during his campaign.
The order doesn’t specify that the two eliminated rules have to
have an equal economic impact as the incoming rule. But it does require
that agencies do not increase their net regulatory burdens this year,
which will hopefully accomplish the same goal.
Additionally, with some exceptions, agencies will not be allowed to
issue new rules that have not first appeared in the Unified Agenda, a
twice-yearly document in which all rulemaking agencies list rules they
intend to implement in the future. Read more here...
4. Why Millennials Could Become the School Choice Generation - via Reason
Millennials could become the school choice generation—but advocates still have a lot of work to do.
According to a survey released by EdChoice in October, millennials
are more in favor of many kinds of school choice reform—charter schools,
voucher programs—than older Americans, but only when they are educated
about these programs. Read more here...
5. CBO Report: More Spending, More Debt Over Next Ten Years - by Jason Pye
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), on Tuesday,
released its first budget outlook report of the new year, offering a
look at the fiscal picture for the next ten years, FY 2018 through FY
2027. It isn't pretty.
In a blog post last week, FreedomWorks looked at the budget picture
from FY 2017 through FY 2026, noting that President Donald Trump's
proposed $10.5 trillion in spending cuts are merely a good start to
addressing the budget deficit. The reason is because even if Congress
eliminated all non-defense discretionary spending, the federal
government would still run a budget deficit of nearly $2.1 trillion over
ten years.
The latest CBO report shows, as one would expect, that the budget
picture is that much worse. While discretionary spending, including
defense, as a percentage of is projected to decline between FY 2018 and
FY 2027, mandatory spending, including Social Security and Medicare, and
interest on the debt are expected to rise, though slightly. Still, the
pie charts below offer a peek at the overall trend expected as Congress
kicks the can down the road on mandatory spending and the startling
increase in publicly held debt, which, together, represent nearly 75
percent of all federal spending. Read more here...
Jason Pye
Director of Public Policy, FreedomWorks
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