Jeb Gets “Animal Spirits” Back On Campaign Radar

Campaigning in Iowa, Jeb Bush threw down the gauntlet on a perennial campaign issue, federal regulations and whether – or which ones – are too burdensome. “The animal spirits of this country are being stifled by this top down driven regulatory system that is choking off the next generation of job creators,” Bush said. Along with some specific recommendations, including reversing net neutrality and rolling back EPA carbon rules for power plants, he proposed a number of general procedural reforms, including a periodic revisiting of all regulations on the books and expanding the requirement that regulators make cost-benefit analyses for what they propose. Legal scholar and former Obama administration official Cass Sunstein takes a look at some of these more general recommendations in his Bloomberg View article, and although he takes issue with Bush’s claim there is a Washington regulatory crisis, he finds some positives.