2016 presidential candidates on government regulations

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2016 Presidential Election Date: November 8, 2016

Candidates Winner: Donald Trump (R) Hillary Clinton (D) • Jill Stein (G) • Gary Johnson (L) • Vice presidential candidates

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Congress struggled to pass much legislation before and after the 2014 midterm elections, and the 113th Congress, the session covering 2013 and 2014, was the second least productive congressional session in modern history. That spurred President Obama to focus on his executive powers to enact his agenda.

Obama's focus on executive powers did not sit well with Republicans who have argued that Obama administration regulations overreach, circumvent Congress and ultimately hurt the economy. “We need to do everything we can to try to rein in the regulatory onslaught, which is the principal reason that we haven't had the kind of bounce-back after the 2008 recession that you would expect,” Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told CNN on January 4, 2015. Donald Trump planned to roll back these regulations -- as well as some laws he believes have given rise to a raft of unwelcome government rules. Those include executive actions on immigration, climate change, the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law.

On immigration, Trump has said that he would end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parents of U.S. Citizens and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA). In lieu of passing immigration reform, Obama used executive actions to launch the programs in 2012 and in 2014, respectively, which shield eligible undocumented immigrants from deportation. Donald Trump has also been vocal about repealing the Affordable Care Act. He said he wants to replace the law with something he dubbed "Donaldcare," Trump also supports the repeal of the regulations developed under Dodd-Frank.

Democrats have welcomed Obama’s use of executive powers in the face of a GOP they believe has refused to negotiate with the Democrats to deny them any political victory. Hillary Clinton has criticized Republicans for seeking to repeal programs she believes are pushing the nation in the right direction, including the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank. "Americans have come too far to see our progress ripped away," Clinton said in a campaign ad.

See below what the 2016 presidential candidates and their respective party platforms said about government regulations.

Interested in reading more about the 2016 candidates' stances on issues related to government regulations?
Ballotpedia also covered what the candidates said about budgets, Wall Street and banking policy, trade, and federal assistance programs.

OVERVIEW OF CANDIDATE POSITIONS

Hillary Clinton supports tightening Wall Street regulations and believes the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank are moving the country in the right direction.

Donald Trump has described government regulation as a “stealth tax" and says government regulations should be pared back to ensure their benefits outweigh their costs. He wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act and believes that CEO salaries and bonuses cannot be regulated.

Jill Stein believes the public lacks confidence in regulatory agencies such as the FDA and is critical of the Dodd-Frank Act.

Gary Johnson advocates for a free market economy and would be willing to use executive authority instead of relying on Congress to advance Libertarian objectives. He supports environmental regulation and mandatory nutrition labels.

Democratic candidate

Hillary Clinton

• Commenting on the planned merger of AT&T and Time Warner in October 2016, Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said, "In general, we think that marketplace competition is a good and healthy thing for consumers and so there’s a number of questions and concerns that arise in that vein about this announced deal but there’s still a lot of information that needs to come out before, before any conclusions should be reached. Certainly, [Clinton] thinks that regulators should scrutinize it closely.”

• On December 9, 2015, Clinton said that, if elected president, she would use the regulatory authority of the U.S. Department of the Treasury to curb the number of corporate inversions if Congress did not act. “This is not only about fairness. This is about patriotism. If Congress won’t act, then I will ask the Treasury Department, when I’m there, to use its regulatory authority, if that’s what it takes,” she said during a campaign stop in Iowa. She also said she backs an “exit tax” that would penalize mergers between U.S. companies and foreign corporations structured to reduce their taxes, a move known as a tax inversion. The plan comes after New York-based drug company Pfizer announced in November announcement of a plan to merge Ireland-based Allergan. The move would enable Pfizer to reduce its tax rate from around 25 percent in 2015 to about 18 percent. Ireland's lower corporate tax rate would have saved Pfizer nearly $1 billion of the $3.1 billion in U.S. taxes it paid in 2014, according to the Associated Press.

Republicans Want to Reverse Our Progress, released in November 12, 2015

• Clinton’s campaign released a video on November 12, 2015, attacking the Republican candidates for seeking to roll back President Obama’s policies, in a peek at how the Democratic frontrunner would contrast herself with the GOP in a general election, TIME reported.

• On October 8, 2015, Clinton wrote an op-ed for Bloomberg detailing her proposals for Wall Street reform. Clinton recommended protecting the Dodd-Frank Act, eliminating the carried interest tax loophole, imposing a “risk fee” on banks with more than $50 billion in assets and enacting a “high-frequency trading” tax.

• On August 31, 2015, Clinton co-wrote an op-ed in The Huffington Post with U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) promoting a new bill that would prohibit employers in the private sector from offering bonuses to departing employees who join the government.

• In December 2005, Clinton introduced S 2126 - Family Entertainment Protection Act, which was intended to limit the exposure of children to violent video games.
• Read more of Hillary Clinton's public statements on government regulations.

The 2016 Democratic Party Platform on government regulations

“ Reining in Wall Street and Fixing our Financial System To restore economic fairness, Democrats will fight against the greed and recklessness of Wall Street. Wall Street cannot be an island unto itself, gambling trillions in risky financial instruments and making huge profits, all the while thinking that taxpayers will be there to bail them out again. We must tackle dangerous risks in big banks and elsewhere in the financial system. We must make Wall Street work for the job-creating, productive economy—including by making loans more affordable for small- and medium-sized businesses. We need to prohibit Wall Street from picking and choosing which credit agency will rate its products as well as from imposing excessive fees on consumers. And we must hold both individuals and corporations accountable when they break the law. Democrats believe that no bank can be too big to fail and no executive too powerful to jail. Democrats will support stronger criminal laws and civil penalties for Wall Street criminals who prey on the public trust. We also support extending the statute of limitations for prosecuting major financial fraud, and providing the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission more resources to prosecute wrongdoing. “Equal Justice Under Law” will not just be words engraved on the entrance of the Supreme Court. It will be the standard that applies to Wall Street and all Americans. We will also vigorously implement, enforce, and build on President Obama’s landmark Dodd-Frank financial reform law, and we will stop dead in its tracks every Republican effort to weaken it. We will stop Republican efforts to hamstring our regulators through budget cuts, and we will ensure they have the resources and independence to fully enforce the law and hold both individuals and corporations accountable when they break the rules. We will also continue to protect consumers and defend the CFPB from Republican attacks. We oppose any efforts to change the CFPB’s structure from a single director to a partisan, gridlocked Commission and likewise oppose any efforts to remove the Bureau’s independent funding and subject it to the appropriations process. Democrats will also continue to support the CFPB in enforcing foundational civil rights laws protecting against discrimination in consumer lending. Democrats condemn predatory payday lending, and will protect consumers by defending the CFPB and implementing strong new regulations. Our goal must be to create a financial system and an economy that works for all Americans, not just a handful of billionaires. We support a financial transactions tax on Wall Street to curb excessive speculation and high-frequency trading, which has threatened financial markets. We acknowledge that there is room within our party for a diversity of views on a broader financial transactions tax. Democrats will not hesitate to use and expand existing authorities as well as empower regulators to downsize or break apart financial institutions when necessary to protect the public and safeguard financial stability, including new authorities to go after risky shadow-banking activities. Banks should not be able to gamble with taxpayers’ deposits or pose an undue risk to Main Street. Democrats support a variety of ways to stop this from happening, including an updated and modernized version of Glass-Steagall as well as breaking up too-big-to-fail financial institutions that pose a systemic risk to the stability of our economy. We believe that personnel is policy. We will nominate and appoint regulators and officials who are not beholden to the industries they regulate—people with a track record of standing up to power and safeguarding the public trust. We will crack down on the revolving door between the private sector—particularly Wall Street—and the federal government. We will ban golden parachutes for those taking government jobs. We will limit conflicts of interest by requiring bank and corporate regulators to recuse themselves from official work on particular matters that would directly benefit their former employers. And we will bar financial service regulators from lobbying their former colleagues for at least two years. We will protect and defend the Federal Reserve’s independence to carry out the dual mandate assigned to it by Congress—for both full employment and low inflation—against threats from new legislation. We will also reform the Federal Reserve to make it more representative of America as a whole, and we will fight to enhance its independence by ensuring that executives of financial institutions are not allowed to serve on the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks or to select members of those boards. At a time when many of the largest banks have shunned communities across America, Democrats believe that we need to give Americans affordable banking options, including by empowering the United States Postal Service to facilitate the delivery of basic banking services. ” —2016 Democratic Party Platform

Republican candidate

Donald Trump

• Donald Trump said he wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act with something he dubbed "Donaldcare," Breitbart reported September 15, 2015. “We’re going to get rid of Obamacare,” Trump told Breitbart after a giving a speech to Veterans for a Strong America—which just endorsed his candidacy for the White House. “We’re going to something really spectacular with that [healthcare], with immigration, with the armed forces,” Trump said.

• On September 13, 2015, Trump called rising CEO salaries “a total and complete joke.” He said, "It's very hard if you have a free enterprise system to do anything about that. You know the boards of companies are supposed to do it but I know companies very well and the CEO puts in all his friends...and they get whatever they want you know because their friends love sitting on the board. That's the system that we have and it's a shame and it’s disgraceful.”

• When endorsing Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election, Trump commented in an op-ed in The Washington Times, "Right now, government regulations cost us annually $1.75 trillion. They constitute a stealth tax that is larger than the amount the Internal Revenue Service collects every year from corporations and individuals combined. In just three years, Mr. Obama has added hugely to the annual regulatory bill." Trump supported a candidate that would "pare that back and make sure every single regulation has benefits that outweigh costs and that they don’t kill U.S. jobs."

• In his 2000 book, The America We Deserve, Trump wrote, "Most of us think the American Dream is a birthright, but without constant care and vigilance, it can and will be whittled down to nothing. The threatening agent is not some foreign power, but people who don’t understand the proper relationship between the public and private arenas. In other words, the greatest threat to the American Dream is the idea that dreamers need close government scrutiny and control. Job one for us is to make sure the public sector does a limited job, and no more."

• Read more of Donald Trump's public statements on government regulations.

The 2016 Republican Party Platform on government regulations

“ Freeing Financial Markets The Republican vision for American banking calls for establishing transparent, efficient markets where consumers can obtain loans they need at reasonable rates based on market conditions. Unfortunately, in response to the financial institutions crisis of 2008-2009, the Democratic-controlled Congress enacted the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, otherwise known as Dodd-Frank. They did not let the crisis go to waste but used it as an excuse to establish unprecedented government control over the nation’s financial markets. The consequences have been bad for everyone except federal regulators. Rather than address the cause of the crisis — the government’s own housing policies — the new law extended government control over the economy by creating new unaccountable bureaucracies. Predictably, central planning of our financial sector has not created jobs, it has killed them. It has not limited risks, it has created more. It has not encouraged economic growth, it has shackled it. Since the enactment of Dodd-Frank, the number of community banks has significantly declined, and the cost and complexity of complying with the law has created impediments to the remaining banks’ ability to support the customers they serve. From 13,000 community banks in 1985, only 1,900 remain. Still, the majority of agricultural loans and small business loans are made by community banks. From start-ups foregone to home loans not made, Dodd-Frank’s excessive regulation and burdensome requirements have helped contribute to the slow economy we all endure today under President Obama and the Democrats. Community banks are essential to ensuring small businesses have easy and affordable access to the capital they need to grow and prosper. Community banks should be relieved of excessive regulations. We support removing roadblocks and regulations that prevent access to capital. The worst of Dodd-Frank is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, deliberately designed to be a rogue agency. It answers to neither Congress nor the executive, has its own guaranteed funding outside the appropriations process, and uses its slush fund to steer settlements to politically favored groups. Its Director has dictatorial powers unique in the American Republic. Its regulatory harassment of local and regional banks, the source of most home mortgages and small business loans, advantages big banks and makes it harder for Americans to buy a home. Its one-size-fits-all approach to every issue threatens the diversity of the country’s financial system and would leave us with just a few enormous institutions, as in many European countries. If the Bureau is not abolished, it should be subjected to congressional appropriation. In that way, consumer protection in the financial markets can be advanced through measures that are both effective and constitutional. Any settlements arising from statutory violations by financial institutions must be used to make whole the harmed consumers, with any remaining proceeds given to the general Treasury. Diversion of settlement funds to politically connected parties should be a criminal offense. Republicans believe that no financial institution is too big to fail. We support legislation to ensure that the problems of any financial institution can be resolved through the Bankruptcy Code. We endorse prudent regulation of the banking system to ensure that FDIC-regulated banks are properly capitalized and taxpayers are protected against bailouts. We will end the government’s use of disparate impact theory in enforcing anti-discrimination laws with regard to lending. ” —2016 Republican Party Platform

Green candidate

Jill Stein

• Discussing vaccines, Stein said that the public lacks confidence in the agencies that regulate them because they are influenced by corporate lobbyists.

• "Vaccines are an invaluable medication," Stein told The Washington Post. But, "like any medication they also should be approved by a regulatory board that people can trust. And I think, right now, that is the problem — that people do not trust a Food and Drug Administration, or even the CDC for that matter, where corporate influence and the pharmaceutical industry has a lot of influence."

• Stein has expressed skepticism about the Food and Drug Administration and other agencies that regulate agriculture and pharmaceuticals because she believes that lobbyists have too great an impact on their decision making.

• During a speech in New York City in 2012 marking the first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, Stein told the crowd that America is at a breaking point and that it was “time to turn that breaking point into a tipping point.” She also criticized the Dodd-Frank Act as “gutless, toothless, and useless.”
• Read more of Jill Stein's public statements on 2016 campaign issues.

The 2016 Green Party Platform on government regulations

“ C. Curbing Corporate Power OUR POSITION Greens want to reduce the economic and political power of large corporations, end corporate personhood and re-design corporations to serve our society, democracy and the environment. Unelected and unaccountable corporate executives are not merely exercising power in our society — they are ruling us. Greens will reduce corporate powers and privileges, including by stripping them of artificial "personhood" and constitutional protections. The Green Party supports strong and effectively enforced antitrust laws and regulation to counteract the concentration of economic and political power that imposes a severe toll on people, places and the planet. Greens believe the legal structure of the corporation is obsolete. At present, corporations are designed solely to generate profit. This legal imperative — profit above all else — is damaging our country and our planet in countless ways. We must change the legal design of corporations so that they generate profits, but not at the expense of the environment, human rights, public health, workers, or the communities in which the corporation operates. One point remains unequivocal: our planet cannot afford business as usual any longer. Because corporations have become the dominant economic institution of the planet, we must compel them to serve human and environmental needs, so that our peoples, nations and environment may live long and prosper. GREEN SOLUTIONS 1. End corporate personhood. A key first step will be federal and state constitutional amendments abolishing the legal fiction of corporate personhood. 2. Federal chartering of corporations that includes comprehensive, strict and enforceable social responsibility requirements. 3. Strengthen the civil justice system to ensure that it holds corporations strictly liable for corporate crime, fraud, violence and malfeasance. This would include revoking the charters of corporations that routinely violate safety, health, environmental protection or other laws. 4. Empower shareholders to stop abuses by the managers they hire through a structure of democratic governance and elections. 5. Enforce existing antitrust laws and support even tougher new ones to curtail the overwhelming economic and political power of large corporations. 6. Increase funding for and strengthen oversight of federal antitrust enforcement. ... K. Anti-Trust Enforcement The Green Party supports strong and effectively enforced anti-trust regulation to counteract the concentration of economic power that imposes a severe toll on the economy. The anti-trust division of the Justice Department has had its scope and powers reduced. An explosion of unregulated mergers and acquisitions, spinoffs, and leveraged buy-outs has overwhelmed the federal government's capacity to provide effective oversight. Financial and trading markets have become particularly vulnerable to insider trading. Securities and Exchange Commission regulation of these markets has seriously fallen short. Overall, what we see in unchecked market power is self-serving abuse of the democratic political process, price gouging, loss of productivity and jobs, reduced competitiveness, and of predatory and monopolistic practices. 1. The Federal Trade Commission must vigorously oversee mergers where the combined sales of the companies exceeds $1 billion. 2. The Justice Department must redefine"relevant market share" in assessing mergers. 3. The Congress must enact its calls for competitiveness by stopping illegal monopolistic practices. 4. We oppose the largesse of government in the form of massive corporate entitlements. ” —2016 Green Party Platform

Libertarian candidate

Gary Johnson

• In an article examining Gary Johnson’s issue positions, Max Ehrenfreund of The Washington Post wrote that Johnson “is much more willing to compromise on questions about the size of government than the more doctrinaire Libertarian candidates of the past. … [H]e supports environmental regulation, and he would be willing to use executive authority to achieve Libertarian objectives rather than relying on Congress.”

• In an August 2011 interview, Johnson named Milton Friedman as his favorite political philosopher. Friedman was described as "the twentieth century’s most prominent advocate of free markets" by the Library of Economics and Liberty.
  • In the same interview, Johnson said he would abolish the Department of Education and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
  • Johnson also said he supported mandated nutrition labels to allow consumers to "make intelligent choices."
• Read more of Gary Johnson's public statements on government regulations.

The 2016 Libertarian Party Platform on government regulations

“ 2.0 Economic Liberty Libertarians want all members of society to have abundant opportunities to achieve economic success. A free and competitive market allocates resources in the most efficient manner. Each person has the right to offer goods and services to others on the free market. The only proper role of government in the economic realm is to protect property rights, adjudicate disputes, and provide a legal framework in which voluntary trade is protected. All efforts by government to redistribute wealth, or to control or manage trade, are improper in a free society. ” —2016 Libertarian Party Platform

Withdrawn candidates

Democrats

• Lincoln Chafee on government regulations
• Lawrence Lessig on government regulations
• Martin O'Malley on government regulations
• Bernie Sanders on government regulations
• Jim Webb on government regulations

Republicans

• Jeb Bush on government regulations
• Ben Carson on government regulations
• Chris Christie on government regulations
• Ted Cruz on government regulations
• Carly Fiorina on government regulations
• Lindsey Graham on government regulations
• Mike Huckabee on government regulations
• Bobby Jindal on government regulations
• John Kasich on government regulations
• George Pataki on government regulations
• Rand Paul on government regulations
• Rick Perry on government regulations
• Marco Rubio on government regulations
• Rick Santorum on government regulations
• Scott Walker on government regulations

Recent news

The link below is to the most recent stories in a Google news search for the terms Presidential candidates government regulations 2016. These results are automatically generated from Google. Ballotpedia does not curate or endorse these articles.

2016 presidential candidates on government regulations - Google News

See also

• Presidential candidates, 2016
• Electoral College