Wall Street Journal skeptical about the new "pro-business" Obama

President Obama used the pages of the Wall Street Journal to announce that he signed an executive order to "restore balance" to the federal regulatory environment. The Journal, like myself and others, is also skeptical about how far the president will go in the name of balance.

Substance aside, Mr. Obama's new order is a significant symbolic concession. The White House is admitting that after an historic voter rebuke due in part to its regulatory overkill, it must show some willingness to pull back the throttle. The President is gradually conceding the conservative and business critique of his first two years, even if the concessions so far are mostly in style and rhetoric.

This rules rethink is akin to the Democratic Congress's vote to extend all the Bush-era tax rates while being forced to admit that raising them would hurt the recovery. Liberals have spent years dismissing warnings that their agenda created uncertainty and harmed the economy, and then they wake up to find their leader on the Wall Street Journal editorial page disowning "unreasonable burdens on business—burdens that have stifled innovation and have had a chilling effect on growth and jobs."

The real test will be how Mr. Obama defines "unreasonable." The executive order he signed yesterday instructs federal agencies to weigh the costs and benefits of proposed rules and choose the least burdensome alternative. Yet that merely reiterates an executive order President Clinton signed in 1993 and that was supposed to be governing the Obama Administration all along. Mr. Obama also ordered a "retrospective analysis" of all rules to streamline or repeal the damaging ones.

One example Mr. Obama cited yesterday is a now-defunct EPA rule that treated saccharin like hazardous waste, as if the current problem is archaic rules. But growth isn't lethargic because there are still colonial laws on the books about when livestock are allowed to graze on the village green. The real problems are those his own Administration and its allies have created—the regulatory blowout of the 111th Congress and the laws his appointees are now abusing to bypass democratic consent.

Related posts:

Harsanyi: Obama isn't fooling anyone on regulation reform
Prove me wrong on your executive order, Obama: Speed up issuance of offshore drilling permits
Two Obamas--and I believe the real one still hates business

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