America needs the Commerce Department like solar power plants need an eclipse.
Iain Murray heads the Center for Economic Freedom at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
WASHINGTON — June 3, 2011– In choosing John Bryson as his nominee to be the next U.S. secretary of commerce, President Obama has chosen a perfect representative of our new ruling class. He is the founder of a lobby group, the powerful Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), who became a regulator with California's Public Utility Commission, then a rent-seeker with Edison International and Boeing. His experience is not in commerce at all, but in getting government to direct monies to favored companies. To be fair, that is the role of the Commerce Department these days, which is exactly why Congress needs to abolish the Commerce Department.
The department proclaims its mission is to “promote job creation, economic growth, sustainable development and improved standards of living for all Americans by working in partnership with businesses, universities, communities and our nation’s workers.” Yet all the evidence suggests that this is unnecessary. America’s native genius lies in its ability to generate jobs, wealth and improved standards of living – when government allows it to. As we say at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, “We don’t need to teach the grass to grow. We just need to move the rocks off of it.”
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