Wall Street Meets the White House, EPA Rules on Greenhouse Gases and Health Care Divided
President Obama hosts a White House summit with Wall Street banking leaders
The Environmental Protection Agency publishes its final rule designating greenhouse gases as a danger to public health.
Senate Democrats continue to be divided over the final passage of major health care legislation.
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1. BUSINESS
President Obama hosts a White House summit with Wall Street banking leaders.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Director of the Center for Investors and Entrepreneurs John Berlau on the future of financial regulation:
“President Obama’s twin goals of more bank loans and more heavy-handed regulation are in conflict with each other. Large financial institutions, such as the ones represented at the White House, as well as smaller regional banks and credit unions, may be holding back their lending due to uncertainty—both about the economy and about what Washington is going to do…If President Obama wants responsible lending and vibrant entrepreneurship, he should listen to this bipartisan coalition in the House and others interested in balancing the costs and benefits of regulation. ”
2. ENVIRONMENT
The Environmental Protection Agency publishes its final rule designating greenhouse gases as a danger to public health.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis on how Congress should respond:
“[This] decision by EPA will trigger costly and time-consuming permitting requirements for tens of thousands of previously unregulated small businesses under the Clean Air Act. A more potent anti-stimulus package would be hard to imagine. The sensible solution would be for Congress to pass legislation, such as that proposed by Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee that would pre-empt the EPA from regulating carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions.”
3. HEALTH
Senate Democrats continue to be divided over the final passage of major health care legislation.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Gregory Conko on one provision Senators should avoid:
Ensuring fair and robust competition in the health insurance market is a key to increasing access and affordability for all Americans. Repealing [the 64-year-old exemption from federal antitrust laws for health insurers] would help neither cause. Instead, it would subject insurers to an antiquated and unsuitable system of federal antitrust oversight that is more likely to reduce competition in the health insurance industry than enhance it. To increase competitiveness in the health insurance industry, Congress should instead focus on ways to reduce burdensome regulations that reduce innovation and other efficiency-enhancing, pro-competitive activity.”
Listen to LibertyWeek, the CEI podcast, here.