Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Pence Criticizes Daniels For Adding Too Many New Regulations

Gov. Mitch Daniels has been accused of a lot of things during his two terms as Indiana's governor, but overregulation of businesses hasn't been of them. Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Pence believes Indiana has become too overregulated. He's calling for a moratorium on new regulations if he's elected governor. From the AP:

Indiana gubernatorial candidate Mike Pence said Tuesday he would issue a temporary moratorium on new business regulations pending a review of existing red tape because companies need a break from the hundreds of new rules imposed by fellow Republican and current Gov. Mitch Daniels.
Pence said that if elected, he'll issue an executive order to declare a moratorium on new regulations and ask his budget office to review existing rules, business fees, and regulatory performance metrics to ensure they were the least costly and had the least impact on job creation.
"The state has added almost 1,200 new regulations in the past four years," Pence said. "Businesses need relief, and they need it now."
Pence's Democratic opponent, John Gregg, thinks that Pence's announcement shows how "out of touch" he is. "This is what happens when you're out of state and out of touch: you call Mitch Daniels an overregulating job-killer," he said in a statement. I wonder how many of those new regulations came about as a result of federal laws passed by Congress or new regulations promulgated by federal agencies. I suspect federal mandates represent a significant share of those new regulations.

Incidentally, the Pence campaign does not include this blogger on its e-mail list. I don't know if that is an oversight or deliberate (I suspect the latter), but it doesn't reflect very well on his campaign in my opinion. I'm included on the mailing list for virtually every Republican and Democratic candidate's campaign without asking to be included, but I have received nada from his campaign other than the hokey fundraising solicitations that come through snail mail from his campaign.

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