Obama v. Jindal on Regulation

From President Obama in his non-SOTU SOTU:

[W]e have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election. A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future. Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn’t afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day.

Well that day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future is here.

* * *

So I ask this Congress to join me in doing whatever proves necessary. Because we cannot consign our nation to an open-ended recession. And to ensure that a crisis of this magnitude never happens again, I ask Congress to move quickly on legislation that will finally reform our outdated regulatory system. It is time to put in place tough, new common-sense rules of the road so that our financial market rewards drive and innovation, and punishes short-cuts and abuse.

Informed, nuanced, careful.

On the other side, from Gov. Bobby Jindal’s Republican response:

To solve our current problems, Washington must lead. But the way to lead is not to raise taxes and put more money and power in hands of Washington politicians. The way to lead is by empowering you – the American people. Because we believe that Americans can do anything.

Yeah.  And I had to stretch to include that based on the implication of one word: “power.”  It’s arguably possible that some of that “power in the hands of Washington politicians” includes the regulatory power.

But, looking at his whole speech, it doesn’t appear that Jindal — and thus, the GOP — considers there to be any need for a look at the regulatory policies that have evolved (devolved?) in the past 28 years.  At the best, he and they don’t think it’s something important enough to mention directly — one way or the other — in the Republican response speech.

Jindal’s speech ceded the ground — structurally, at least — to Obama’s format entirely.  But at the point where Obama is done talking about solving this economic crisis, he talks about ensuring that such a crisis doesn’t happen again.  Jindal, however, goes directly from attacking the stimulus package by talking about how tax cuts have “worked” in Louisiana to starting down Obama’s “three areas that are absolutely critical to our economic future: energy, health care, and education.”

Maybe I’m wrong, but I think that Obama, Chairman Frank and Cass Sunstein have very clear plans to take a detailed look at regulatory reform — and sooner rather than later.  Do the Republicans know that they can’t oppose a hard look at financial regulations right now and so are just ignoring it?  Do they have enough faith in Frank and Sunstein as “reasonable regulators” that they don’t yet see a need to sound the alarm bells?

Either Jindal and the GOP will wholeheartedly support a new look at regulatory reform (which doesn’t seem likely), he and they will oppose it (possible but politically dicey), or the Republicans just haven’t yet figured out how they’re going to deal with this very hot potato(e).

In any event, I’m glad to see Obama put it out there so clearly as a priority of the new Administration.

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