HOW THE LAME DUCK 2010 CONGRESS AND OBAMA'S SZARS SCREWED THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

By Dr. Michael S. Coffman Ph. D.
January 23, 2011
NewsWithViews.com

Many conservatives holding their breath during the 2010 lame duck session were relieved that the progressives didn’t pass as much damaging legislation as feared. Unfortunately, they celebrated too quickly. Just as everyone was settling down for Christmas, all those unaccountable Obama Czars were finally able to do what they were hired to do; implement regulations that Congress could never pass as legislation. These regulations are no longer just strangling our economy. They are destroying it.

Excessive regulations have far greater impact than is generally thought. The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) reported that 80,000 pages of proposed and new regulations were printed in the Federal Register in 2008. Over 26,000 pages out of the 80,000 were new regulations to which businesses must conform. CEI estimated that the compliance cost in 2008 was a staggering $1.2 trillion dollars. That is 8 percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product! That cost is added on to the price of everything we buy.[1] The man hours needed by businesses to read these new rules are in the millions of hours. Is it any wonder that U.S. businesses and industry are fleeing to other nations?

On Tuesday before Christmas 2010, the Obama administration issued thousands of pages of new regulations to the 60,000 already issued during the year. Some of these merely burden the economy. Others however, put the very foundations of the nation at risk.

It started on the Tuesday before Christmas when Health and Human Services, at the direction of Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Czar Nancy-Ann DeParle announced that health insurance companies must receive permission from the Obama Administration before they can raise rates by more than 10 percent. This followed major increases in health insurance by companies adjusting to Obamacare, and the subsequent blizzard of requests from businesses for exemptions to allow them to continue their employees’ health insurance benefits.

As usual, the linear thinking of progressives results in the belief that capping premiums will help keep rising insurance costs in check. Unfortunately for them, historical evidence shows that capping prices never worked when they tried it in the past. However, contrary evidence has never stopped progressives before. After all, they “knowâ€