While the debt-ceiling debate exposed the billions of capital diverted from productive markets to Democrats’ pals (“This is a chance to do something big, man!” Biden thrilled in 2009 to Obama as they plotted some $100 billion of Porkulus for green projects), the real battle is over Obama’s massive expansion of the regulatory state. It is strangling jobs, spooking investment, and driving business cash under the mattress.
Here in Michigan, you can’t talk to an industry that isn’t consumed in a battle with Washington bureaucrats — whether autos and CAFE, or utilities and the EPA, or the corner physical therapist and Obamacare. The din is deafening — except to a mainstream media that hears only Obama’s sweet whispers.
Rep. Fred Upton (R., Mich.), who chairs the Energy and Commerce Committee that oversees Obamacare and EPA, can hear it.
“We’re all looking for glimmers of economic hope, and today’s jobs report — while not nearly enough to create the recovery Americans need — was somewhat better than expected,” said Upton this morning about the latest disappointing jobs news. “Yet it underscores that America’s economy is limping under the weight of a large and growing federal government and the burdens and uncertainty created by reckless and relentless regulations. If this administration is serious about job creation and not just paying lip service, it should begin by putting the brakes on this regulatory train wreck.”
It’s the regulations, stupid.
Upton is a congressman, and he represents the screams of job creators in Michigan and across the country. It is testimony to how out of touch the MSM is that the regulatory assault — voiced by a major political player — doesn’t lead every news program.
And it is testimony to how a monolithically Left MSM fills its rolodex — not with job creators in their communities — but with pro-government activists in DC.