(BigGovernment.news) It didn’t get much play outside of a few media circles, but what the presumptive Republican presidential nominee just said about federal regulations is huge.
Per Reuters:
U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Thursday that if elected he would scrap a slew of federal regulations that he said are even more of a burden on American business owners than high taxes, and would try to refinance longer-term U.S. debt.
“We’re lowering taxes very substantially and we’re going to be getting rid of a tremendous amount of regulations,” Trump said in an interview with CNBC.
For conservatives who were searching for some reason to support a very unorthodox GOP presidential contender, this is one good reason. For the millions of unemployed, under-employed and business owners of any political persuasion who have already jumped aboard the Trump Train, this is vindication.
To be fair, Trump has provided little red meat for conservatives and the economically beleaguered since he began his campaign, other than some details about his tax plan. But in the back of our minds, most of us knew instinctively that it would take a businessman-turned-president to both understand the massive burden federal regulations place on our economy and the negative effect they have on business expansion and job growth.
Democrat Hillary Clinton and socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, by comparison, have never built a business, hired employees, made payrolls week after week, gave people an opportunity to earn a living for their families – and all while having to navigate a burgeoning sea of regulatory red tape via a multitude of federal, state and local agencies, each just waiting to pound with fines and other enforcement action for even the slightest infraction of the most miniscule of rules.
Despite his brash declarations and his sometimes-failed attempts at creating viable businesses, Trump has obviously succeeded far more than he has failed, and to assume that he has learned nothing along the way about byzantine regulatory burdens is absurd. The man, no doubt, is much more of an expert in regulatory burden than the men and women and agencies who impose them, a group to which Sanders still belongs and Clinton used to belong to.
Saying he’s going to reduce federal regulatory burdens does not necessarily comport with actually reducing said burdens, but Trump is alone in this narrowing presidential race in even calling for reductions. You’ll not hear Clinton speak of this, and as for Sanders, he just believes there is too little regulation by the federal government.
The National Association of Manufactures estimated in 2012 [PDF] that the cost of federal regulations then amounted to $2.08 trillion annually, or more than $233,000 annually, on average (21 percent of average payroll). Given the regulatory burdens placed by the Obama administration – to include the behemoth, Obamacare – these figures have only increased, with 2015 being a record-setting year. If the U.S. economy is to ever get off life support, the federal regulatory burden will simply have to be scaled back.
As many of us had anticipated, Trump has now officially made the case that he’ll attempt to do so. This is the best economic news of the campaign thus far.
More:
- Investment in businesses is drying up and Uncle Sam’s regulatory regime is largely to blame
- New House bills seek to decriminalize American life and ought to be supported
- Federal government set all-time record for number of new regulations in 2015 – Collapse.news
Freedom.news is part of the USA Features Media network.
