The federal government's regulatory burden is now at a staggering level, reaching the tens of billions of dollars in annual costs. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) has been working to throw some road tacks underneath it.
The minority leader has been quietly stacking nominees to commissions and panels with conservative experts—rather than the honorary, political picks that often populate the posts. The result is a new slate of conservatives in regulatory posts, National Review's Dan Foster reports:
Then there is Chris Beall, an infrastructure expert whose first job was building natural-gas pipelines for the Koch brothers and who had spent most of the rest of his career in finance, privatizing dozens of public utilities. On McConnell’s recommendation (and, one assumes, to Joe Biden’s lament), Obama nominated Beall — the man who built climate-change conduits for the Co-Princes of Darkness — to the board of directors of Amtrak.
The list goes on. It is populated by individuals with both expertise and conservative pedigrees, in many cases already known for advocating the sorts of causes that annoy the White House — and who nevertheless were formally nominated by the White House. McConnell values this list not just because it stocks bureaucratic Washington with Obama opponents, but also because it constitutes a farm team for the next Republican administration, credentialing conservatives, many of whom have not had government experience, to take more senior roles once the GOP returns to Pennsylvania Avenue. [...]
And while a few appointments to commissions with Democratic majorities aren’t going to undo the progressive agenda all by themselves, they can prevail in the right spots, and gum up the works in others. Daniel Gallagher, a longtime SEC staffer and regulatory expert whom McConnell tapped to return as one of five SEC commissioners after a stint in the private sector, is a good example. In at least two instances, Gallagher convinced Democratic SEC commissioners to flip their votes on major regulations, ensuring their defeat in favor of Republican alternatives.