Weak follow Through
by digby
Dday deftly deconstructs the administration's keystone cops routine yesterday on "regulation reform" and sees the pattern under all the confusion:
Administration announces policy. One side or the other goes ballistic. Administration backtracks and assures people that policy won’t really change much of anything. People who supported initial policy go ballistic. Rinse. Repeat.
This is how the villagers prefer it to be done, by the way. They really like it when they can report these thing like little passion plays. It's been that way as long as I can remember. I'm not sure why Democrats feel they need to play along, but they always do. I think it's because they always get praised for the retreat. Republicans handle it differently --- they behave like dominatrixes, something the villagers also like. I guess they all have their roles to play ...
But dday actually uses this pattern to point to something else, which I think has always been the Achilles heel of the President's signature issues --- implementation (you could look it up):
Rather than put out misleading press releases that amount to “we’re going to be efficient,” the Administration might want to take a look at how they’re implementing the new regulatory environment for which they fought for two years. It’s clear that the regulatory agencies don’t have the funds or manpower to implement health care and financial reform right now, and as a result the laws will not even reach the modest goals laid out when passed in Congress. Regulators did manage to get a study done on implementing the Volcker rule yesterday (and at first glance, it actually looks OK), but on many other fronts, financial regulators are missing deadlines left and right.
If the GOP takes over in 2012, these things will completely fall apart. Even if they are unable to completely repeal it, they will certainly make sure that it doesn't work properly. How better to prove that government can't do anything right?
Of course, that might happen under this administration and a Democratic congress if in their zeal to prove how "fiscally responsible" they are, they keep starving the government of workers and money to implement their own program. It's hard to believe they could be so self-defeating, but in this weird environment anything's possible.
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