To me, the following sentence is a beautiful encapsulation of government at work: “But administration officials argue that the act would provide additional funding for the Federal Highway Administration, and some of that money could be used to speed up environmental and other approvals.”
The administration is arguing to provide funding via Obama’s new “jobs bill” for a bridge. Some of the money, which is intended to create jobs, would go right to work doing the huge job creating function of spending capital to comply with regulations. Set aside that the same administration (as in, the entity that administers the government bureaucracy) that is providing money to speed approvals is capable of simply telling someone “approve this”. Isn’t it a little bit like saying I can’t go to work until I pay myself to drive myself to my job? So that seems a little weird… or possibly insane.
What’s really frustrating is that we have Obama’s belief in government spending on infrastructure as the way out of the unemployment problem, but his infrastructure spending keeps running smack into the problem of regulations causing anything he wants to do to take too much time. Yet, Obama’s own administration is not only failing to recognize that over-regulation is hurting the economy (if it hurts government spending plans, just think what a burden it is placing on the private sector!), they are actually increasing the regulatory burden.
You can’t make this stuff up. They (the administration) wants to spend money (taxpayer dollars) to pay the administration to speed up regulatory approvals that they administer. Those regulations are slowing down their own plans, and they don’t see how regulatory burden is crimping the economy. Good Lord! Who are these nitwits?
(Hat Tip to Ed Morrissey at Hot Air and his Obamateurism of the Day)
Nitwits In Charge of the Economy
To me, the following sentence is a beautiful encapsulation of government at work: “But administration officials argue that the act would provide additional funding for the Federal Highway Administration, and some of that money could be used to speed up environmental and other approvals.”
The administration is arguing to provide funding via Obama’s new “jobs bill” for a bridge. Some of the money, which is intended to create jobs, would go right to work doing the huge job creating function of spending capital to comply with regulations. Set aside that the same administration (as in, the entity that administers the government bureaucracy) that is providing money to speed approvals is capable of simply telling someone “approve this”. Isn’t it a little bit like saying I can’t go to work until I pay myself to drive myself to my job? So that seems a little weird… or possibly insane.
What’s really frustrating is that we have Obama’s belief in government spending on infrastructure as the way out of the unemployment problem, but his infrastructure spending keeps running smack into the problem of regulations causing anything he wants to do to take too much time. Yet, Obama’s own administration is not only failing to recognize that over-regulation is hurting the economy (if it hurts government spending plans, just think what a burden it is placing on the private sector!), they are actually increasing the regulatory burden.
You can’t make this stuff up. They (the administration) wants to spend money (taxpayer dollars) to pay the administration to speed up regulatory approvals that they administer. Those regulations are slowing down their own plans, and they don’t see how regulatory burden is crimping the economy. Good Lord! Who are these nitwits?
(Hat Tip to Ed Morrissey at Hot Air and his Obamateurism of the Day)