Obama seeks fresh start with business
President Obama pledged that his administration would be a strong partner with business in working to boost the U.S. economy and called for an equal effort to restore a fading sense of the American dream.
Seeking a fresh start with the nation’s most powerful business lobby, Obama focused on his administration’s new effort to ease burdensome regulations — a topic that has emerged as the top concern of Republicans and business advocates in Washington — in his speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Obama sought to distinguish between inefficient government regulation of the kind he raised in his State of the Union speech — over things like salmon — and a more legitimate government role in areas such as the environment.
“Even as we work to eliminate burdensome regulations, America’s businesses have a responsibility to recognize that there are some safeguards and standards that are necessary to protect the American people from harm or exploitation,” he said Monday.
“Few of us would want to live in a society without the rules that keep our air and water clean … yet when standards like these have been proposed, opponents have often warned that they would be an assault on business and free enterprise.”
The audience welcomed Obama with a standing ovation and laughed politely when he joked they “would have gotten off on a better foot if I had brought over a fruitcake when we first moved in.”
But there was little hearty applause, and after the president shook a few hands and walked back to the White House, chamber members were guarded in their reviews of his message.
Matthew R. Shay, president of the National Retail Federation, said he welcomed Obama’s promise to overhaul the regulatory regime but wondered how far the administration was willing to go.
“We know some of the agencies have been carved out and are specifically exempt,” Shay said. “That’s going to be what the conversation is. What constitutes reform? And what constitutes regulation? That’s where we’re going to probably have some disagreements.”
The rules that keep air and water clean are the target of aggressive lobbying on Capitol Hill by the chamber and sister business organizations as well as individual businesses.
California Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), chairman of the powerful House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, released nearly 2,000 pages of letters Monday from businesses and trade associations identifying dozens of existing and potential regulations they want revised or repealed.
Issa asked for the letters last month from more than 150 businesses and industry groups. He also launched a website, AmericanJobCreators.com, that allows others to provide feedback on his question: How is government holding your business back? He will hold a hearing Thursday on “regulatory impediments to job creation.”
Issa spokesman Kurt Bardella said the committee wanted to work with the White House and was encouraged by the administration’s regulatory review.
Days before Obama spoke to the chamber, business lobbyists circulated memos detailing concerns with his executive order calling for review of costly regulations. The order did not apply to independent agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, which issue some of the regulations that most concern business.
Chamber President Tom Donohue wrote to the SEC and other agencies in the last few days expressing his concern and asking that they voluntarily comply with the order.
Since those letters went out, White House officials asked independent agencies to voluntarily comply with the executive order.
Staff writers Christi Parsons and Michael A. Memoli in Washington contributed to this report.
