More That President Obama Is Doing On His Own

by Stuart Shapiro

Last night Alan posted about President Obama’s efforts to jump start a recovery by using the powers of the presidency.  This is not unusual.  All presidents, regardless of party, turn to their own powers when faced with a hostile Congress.  And it is not just about creating jobs that the Obama administration has been hard at work over the past week (h/t RegBlog on both).  The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) moved forward on implementing recommendations made in the wake of the nuclear disaster in Japan.

The recommendations include new standards aimed at strengthening operators’ ability to deal with a complete loss of power, ensuring plants can withstand floods and earthquakes and improving emergency response capabilities.

And in a major deregulatory initiative, the Department of Health and Human Services loosened regulations on hospitals.

New proposed rules released today by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services would reduce unnecessary, obsolete, or burdensome regulations and save hospitals and healthcare providers nearly $1.1 billion each year and over $5 billion over 5 years.  The new proposals regarding the rules for hospitals that treat Medicare and Medicaid patients were developed in response to President Obama’s call on all Federal agencies to eliminate burdensome and unnecessary regulations.

Expect announcements like these to be extremely common over the next year.

(For those of you who like your blog posts super wonky, I have a new one up here)

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.