Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
On Thursday, Sen. John McCain called for a "moratorium" on federal regulations which
are "costing businesses billions and billions of jobs." No, really. The United States only has a population slightly more than 300 million people, so this is gross exaggeration by Grampy Crankypants.
So is his assertion that government regulations are costing jobs. This is another GOP myth that fact-checkers have conclusively debunked as "false."
CNN is the latest news organization to deliver a decisive takedown of the false claim that government regulations are strangling the recovery:
In the first two quarters of this year, only 2,085 new unemployment claims were attributed to government regulation, while 55,759 were tied to insufficient demand, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data on mass layoffs. Furthermore, less than 20% of small business owners cite government regulations as their most important problem, according to a survey by the National Federation of Independent Business.
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This claim had already been thoroughly debunked. The Associated Press recently did a bracing fact check and concluded that Labor Department data show that under Obama, just two-tenths of 1 percent of layoffs have been due to government regulation. McClatchy recently canvassed small businesses across the country and found little evidence that it’s a factor.
And Bruce Bartlett, a top policy adviser in the administrations of Reagan and the elder Bush, recently concluded that worry about regulatory uncertainty “is a canard invented by Republicans” and “not a serious effort to deal with high unemployment.” Bartlett argued that the focus on regulation is rooted in the GOP’s lack of any real ideas to create jobs.
As Greg Sargent says, "whether McCain really believes it, his suggestion that rolling back regulations could save “billions and billions of jobs” only underscores how arbitrary and at odds with the data this prescription for “job creation” really is." John McCain’s ideas will save billions and billions of jobs – The Plum Line (h/t for the CNN post as well).
UPDATE: Steve Benen adds at the Political Animal – A thorough debunking:
The New York Times, the AP, the Economic Policy Institute, the Wall Street Journal, and McClatchy newspapers all did their own research and reporting on this in recent weeks, and all came to the exact same conclusion. At this point, it’s safe to say anyone insisting that regulations are the driving factor behind the weak economy is a fool or a hack.
What is holding back the economy? In every instances, all of the reporting pointed to a lack of demand. Republicans may not care for the rules of supply and demand, but they’re not subject to GOP filibusters.