A reader contacted Bluestem Prairie today with news that the former Dayton senior policy advisor who took to Facebook to rip Walz comments on buffers & "regulatory humility" had followed through on her closing statement to write more on the topic.
On her personal Facebook page, Molly Schultz Pederson writes of her search for the origins of the phrase "regulatory humility." Walz had said in an interview with the Hutchinson Leader and reported with emphasis supplied by Bluestem Prairie:
“Our producers want to keep that water as clean as possible, want to do it in the most efficient way, willing certainly to help. Certainly tired of people lecturing to them. I don’t think our agencies need to be seen as regulatory agencies, they need to be seen as partners ... I will show regulatory humility … rather than me coming in with a stick and telling you what it’s going to be, I’m much more the carrot guy.” [emphasis added]
Pederson writes in Tuesday's Facebook post (screenshots below):
Ever since I posted my concerns about Tim Walz over the weekend [read here], one phrase he used during his interview about buffers has been rattling around in my brain.
"Regulatory humility."
I'd heard that phrase before, but couldn't remember where, so I hit the old internets and what I found is pretty frightening.
"Regulatory humility" is a concept touted by the American Enterprise Institute as their preferred way of addressing the role of government in market oversight. I thought I'd need to spend a lot of time on AEI's website trying to figure out who they are and who they influence, but I saw that Lynne Cheney is one of their "scholars" so that told me all I needed to know, and I moved on.
I then saw that in 2016, Paul Ryan introduced a government reform package written by the Heritage Foundation that he touted as "regulatory humility" and it was as horrible as I assumed it would be. Everything from scrapping the Dodd-Frank laws, eliminating internet provider rules (net neutrality), forbidding Obama from moving forward with the Clean Power Plan, and making it downright impossible for the federal government to ever implement another rule or guideline.
I also saw that Trump's appointees are using "regulatory humility" as their reasons for rolling back all of the Obama-era protections that we as Democrats have championed. His FTC chair says that "regulatory humility" is needed to get rid of rules protecting consumers from predatory lending institutions. His FCC chair says "regulatory humility" is the reason why net neutrality needed to go away. The new head of the FAA says that "regulatory humility" is the reason why we shouldn't do anything to protect travelers from sitting on tarmacs for 15 hours.
I spent three years meeting with advocates and opponents of laws and proposed laws in the areas of environment, agriculture, energy, and commerce on behalf of Mark Dayton, and my colleagues had similar meetings on issues related to health care, education, transportation, public safety, and on and on. My direction from him was clear: listen, offer advice, and bring him everyone's concerns and proposed "fixes." But what was also clear was the message he expected us to deliver to them all: go work it out with each other. Because at the end of the day, Mark Dayton wanted to GET STUFF DONE.
I am not sure exactly what Tim Walz means when he says he'll show "regulatory humility" and be the "carrot guy" if he's elected governor. But his willingness to use a phrase that's been so clearly defined by conservative think tanks, and so freely used by Paul Ryan and the Trump Administration as the excuse to roll back really important oversight and protections leads me to believe that Tim Walz might use "regulatory humility" as his own excuse to do...not much of anything.
While Pederson isn't an acquaintance or Facebook friend, we can check her searches on "the old internets" and verify the accuracy of her take. The 2015 talk posted on the FTC's website, Regulatory Humility in Practice: Remarks by FTC Commissioner Maureen K. Ohlhausen, was presented at the American Enterprise Institute (there's both a video and pdf of the event). Earlier that year, Mark Jamison had posted The importance of regulatory humility, on the think tank's website. He cites an earlier paper about the concept by Ohlhausen.
In his first week in office in 2017, Trump Name[d] Advocate of "Regulatory Humility" to Lead FTC.
The 2016 "Better Way" reform package [pdf here] is briefly touched upon in the 2018 A Conversation With Heritage President Kay Coles James and House Speaker Paul Ryan. Forbes' contributor and former Bush administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) Susan Dudley wrote of Speaker Ryan's Call For Regulatory Humility in 2016.
Pederson's concluding paragraph raises important points about Walz's choice of language when he described what the role of state agencies would be in his administration:
I am not sure exactly what Tim Walz means when he says he'll show "regulatory humility" and be the "carrot guy" if he's elected governor. But his willingness to use a phrase that's been so clearly defined by conservative think tanks, and so freely used by Paul Ryan and the Trump Administration as the excuse to roll back really important oversight and protections leads me to believe that Tim Walz might use "regulatory humility" as his own excuse to do...not much of anything.
Bluestem supposes that there might be an explanation of the choice of words, but we also tend to agree with the late Maya Angelou: "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." If Walz asserted that as governor, he'd run Minnesota state agencies under the banner of "regulatory humility," Minnesota's DFL primary voters should know what that concept means.
Pederson formerly served as Executive Director of Audubon Minnesota and Government Affairs Director for Conservation Minnesota. Her LinkedIn profile states that she was a Senior Policy Advisor for Governor Dayton from October 2013-June 2016; her Facebook profile notes that she is self-employed at Molly Schultz Pedersen Consulting.
She has one client as a contract lobbyist. According to Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board records, she is a registered lobbyist for Friends of the Mississippi River. According to the Board's records, she has not contributed contributions to any political candidate.
Earlier posts in this series:
The unbearable humility of regulatory capture: Walz set to erase years of work on buffers
Former Dayton senior policy advisor rips Walz comments on buffers & "regulatory humility"
Screenshots of the latest Molly Schultz Pederson Facebook post; there is some overlap between the text in the two posts, but we are presenting them as sent by our reader.
Photo: Buffers, elements of non-buddy agencies.
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