Obama orders regulatory review

President Obama ordered every federal agency Tuesday to conduct a systematic review of existing regulations and to banish red tape that stifles job growth, as the White House campaigns to repair its fractured relationship with the business community.

In a new executive order, Obama laid out a regulatory strategy that aims to walk the fine line between protecting public health and safety while freeing businesses to pursue profits. Many of its principles are already in use, but the formal order puts agencies across the government on notice to avoid "unreasonable burdens on business" when formulating regulations, Obama wrote in an op-ed in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal.

"Over the past two years, the goal of my administration has been to strike the right balance. And today, I am signing an executive order that makes clear that this is the operating principle of our government," the president wrote. "This order requires that federal agencies ensure that regulations protect our safety, health and environment while promoting economic growth."

The announcement came as top regulators moved toward carrying out the largest rewrite of financial system regulations since the Great Depression, an overhaul spearheaded by the Obama administration and criticized by Republicans as unnecessarily burdensome for businesses and potentially harmful to the economy.

Members of the Financial Stability Oversight Council inched closer Tuesday to designating which financial firms will be considered "systemically important" and therefore subject to stricter government regulation. They also considered recommendations for reining in certain types of risky Wall Street trading.

These new regulations are mostly exempt from Obama's order because the key agencies responsible for tougher financial oversight - including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Federal Reserve - are independent bodies over which the White House exerts no authority.

A spokesman for House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said that any serious effort to ferret out job-killing regulations would include the new financial rules.

"Excluding these key areas certainly raises questions about how effective and thorough the White House intends this highly touted plan to be," Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said.

Other Republicans - including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.) and Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Government Oversight - offered praise for the effort, noting that Obama had adopted a key demand Republicans made during the recent congressional campaign. The response from business was equally mixed, though groups such as the Business Roundtable have been calling for months for a review of regulations they view as outdated, conflicting and overly restrictive.

Thomas J. Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, called the executive order a positive first step, but said policymakers should do more - such as extending the review to cover regulations associated with Obama's new health care initiative and the overhaul of the financial system.

"Congress should reclaim some of the authority it has delegated to the agencies and implement effective checks and balances on agency power," Donohue said in a statement.

Labor and consumer watchdog groups, meanwhile, were alarmed by the announcement. Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, called the executive order "an early Valentine to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce." And Peg Seminario, director of safety and health for the AFL-CIO, said the labor giant is "quite concerned that the strategy announced today will slow down regulations intended to protect workers, consumers and the environment from abuses by corporations and employers."