Top 100 Regulatory Quotes
#1. Blight has descended on our regulatory agencies
and a dry rot, beginning in Washington, is seeping into every corner of America
in the payola mentality, the expense account way of life, the confusion between what is legal and what is right.
John F. Kennedy
#2. There's been so much corruption and so much cronyism in the taxi industry and so much regulatory capture, that if you ask for permission upfront for something that's already legal, you'll never get it.
Travis Kalanick
#3. Put not your trust in new leaders, better systems, new organisations or regulatory reorganisation. They may well be good and necessary, but will to some degree fail.
Justin Welby
#4. Legislation must be passed which undoes the damage caused by excessive de-regulation. That means reinstalling the regulatory firewalls that were ripped down in 1999.
Bernie Sanders
#5. I personally believe that any country that has a nuclear program should conform to international regulations and should have international regulatory bodies that check to make sure that any nuclear program moves in the right direction.
Abdallah II Of Jordan
#6. Money never seems to be interested in strengthening regulatory agencies, for example, but always in subverting them, in making them miss the danger signs in coal mines and in derivatives trading and in deep-sea oil wells.
Thomas Frank
#7. Smart businesses do not look at labor costs alone anymore. They do look at market access, transportation, telecommunications infrastructure and the education and skill level of the workforce, the development of capital and the regulatory market.
Janet Napolitano
#8. Thanks to Progressives such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, we are now living under a system where the president is forced to step in to stop a regulatory agency from promulgating regulations that Congress refused to enact.
Andrew P. Napolitano
#9. When regulations on the housing industry are reasonable, the cost of housing goes down. Regulatory relief is needed to make housing more affordable to more Americans.
Randy Neugebauer
#10. I think there is some overreach in the sense that the EPA now says: if Congress doesn't pass greenhouse emissions regulations or testing, we'll simply do it on our own. I think that's an arrogance of a regulatory body run amok.
Rand Paul
#11. The future regulatory arrangements for the newspaper industry need to be done in a much calmer deliberative way, in slower time when we've got beyond this media firestorm.
Thomas Watson Jr.
#12. I would argue that no financial instrument counted as regulatory capital should be allowed to receive any protection from losses.
Ben Bernanke
#13. I'm one of the few people up here who actually believes that we need a level playing field when it comes to manufacturing. That means a good tax code, a good regulatory environment, low energy prices, better opportunities for workers to get training.
Rick Santorum
#14. The concept of industry domination of regulatory agencies was well known and documented in the literature by the 1960s.
Nick Johnson
#15. Obviously, Nevada doesn't prohibit all forms of gambling, but you have to submit yourself to a very rigorous regulatory process to run a gambling operation in Nevada.
Eric Schneiderman
#16. Internet and government is Topic A in every nation, all around the world. There is the question of getting the Internet built. That involves persuading government to have regulatory policies. It involves new technology to bring the Internet to rural places.
Vint Cerf
#17. Early 2000s, we get Enron, which tells us the books are dirty. And what is our repeated response? We just keep pulling the threads out of the regulatory fabric.
Elizabeth Warren
#18. Every new rule, mandate, and regulatory edict is one more obstacle that small business owners, entrepreneurs, and job creators have to swallow.
Marsha Blackburn
#19. The British regulatory system was revised, so that bigger profits were encouraged, which removed the option of big spending on programming. Quality just fell off a cliff, and all the old hands either left or were fired for being too expensive.
Lee Child
#20. Often you see big companies, big banks who are eager to embrace crushing regulatory burdens because they drive up everyone's costs.
Ted Cruz
#21. Authorize the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries and reduce regulatory barriers.
Newt Gingrich
#22. As a medical doctor who chose a career in artificial heart technology rather than clinical practice, I decided not to take an internship, which is required for licensing. Instead, I work with invention, manufacturing, regulatory affairs, and clinical application of artificial hearts.
Robert Jarvik
#23. For market discipline to constrain risk effectively, financial institutions must be allowed to fail. Under optimal financial regulatory and financial system infrastructures, such a failure would not threaten the overall system.
Henry Paulson
#24. So, we're saying, if we can give developers and builders incentives to cut down on the regulatory barriers that are faced in this country, then we might be able to address the needs of affordable housing.
Alphonso Jackson
#25. Electricity transmission operates on a frequency between 49.7 Hertz and 50.2 Hertz. What I have done is petitioned the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission and squeezed this band to now 49.9 Hertz to 50.1 Hertz. This will contain volatility.
Jyotiraditya Madhavrao Scindia
#26. In the rare event that the Supreme Court refuses to play along there is always a perfectly legal, extra-constitutional, quasi-legislative, quasi-executive, quasi-judicial, 'independent' regulatory commission or executive agency to kill off or override constitutional protections.
Ilana Mercer
#27. America is sinking under the crushing weight of the ever-expanding regulatory state. This burden threatens to disrupt our recovery, hamper long-term growth, undermine our global competitiveness, and suffocate the entrepreneurial spirit so vital to America's success.
Tom J. Donohue
#28. We actually are waiting for more people to be killed before we can do something that makes sense. We don't kill enough people in aviation to merit regulatory changes.
Deborah Hersman
#29. We don't really have any kind of regulatory structure at all.
Barack Obama
#30. I think we're fooling ourselves if we think that regulators are going to be able to outsmart the bankers. So, the task of designing regulatory reform is trying to make more or less foolproof regulation and that's one of the advantages of the systemic category.
Robert F. Engle
#31. Finding a 'sacrificial lamb' on whom to tag blame for complicated problems is an important instrument in the toolkit of politicians, because it deflects blame for the nation's economic woes away from their own regulatory lapses, economic mismanagement and coddling to labor unions.
Clayton Christensen
#32. The US economy today is in really bad shape. Our economic growth is minimal, our regulatory burden is horrific, taxes are high, businessmen are not investing in growth, and consumers and government are loaded up with debt.
Yaron Brook
#33. Ninety-five percent of the work in the attorney general's office is civil litigation and regulatory work, and I think I certainly have a lot more experience in that than most of the folks who have served in the office.
Eric Schneiderman
#34. We are pleased with the very positive reception our offer has received, and are confident that progress is being made towards establishing the regulatory framework for the offer.
Lakshmi Mittal
#35. Fortunately, when Korea was struck by the 1997/8 financial crisis, that was a good opportunity for us to engage in fundamental reforms and strengthen our financial structure. As a result, our financial regulatory structure and regime have been very much strengthened.
Lee Myung-bak
#36. So Bush certainly wasn't the greatest, and Obama has not done the job. And he's created a lot of disincentive. He's created a lot of great dissatisfaction. Regulations and regulatory is going through the roof. It's almost impossible to get anything done in the country.
Donald Trump
#37. We've already seen the federal government stretch their regulatory tentacles into our homes and determine what kind of light bulbs we have to use.
Marsha Blackburn
#38. Small-business people do not want to have more than 50 employees, because that's when all the regulatory burden of Obamacare kicks in.
Michele Bachmann
#39. Going public is 18-month process, while an acquisition is a 6-month process. Going public means going under so much scrutiny, regulatory approval, auditing, magnified 10 times. Having the stomach to do that isn't necessarily in my DNA. My DNA is building a product and a service.
Brian Acton
#40. Democrats are ready, willing, and able to provide regulatory relief for community banks and credit unions.
Sherrod Brown
#41. Laws continue to be enacted, and the regulatory environment has become more complex due to unacceptable conduct remediation. Consequently, entities continue to be compelled to demonstrate compliance with legal mandates through documented assurance assessments.
Robert E. Davis
#42. President Obama has called for economic and political empowerment of women globally. The Equal Futures Partnership promotes removal of policy, legal, and regulatory barriers that hold women back at local, state and national levels.
Lael Brainard
#43. Many people who try to do big bold things in the world find out it's not about the money or the technology: It's about the regulatory hurdles that will try and stop you.
Peter Diamandis
#44. If we do not halt this steady process of building commissions and regulatory bodies and the special legislation like huge inverted pyramids over every one of the simple constitutional provisions, we shall soon be spending many billions of dollars more.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#45. Genetic engineering is having a serious impact on the food we eat, on the environment, and on farmers. To ensure we can maximize benefits and minimize hazards, Congress must provide a comprehensive regulatory framework for all genetically engineered products.
Dennis Kucinich
#46. Every regulatory speech on derivatives takes a bow to their hedging 'benefits.' Less publicly, regulators pay their respects to derivative profits, a blessed relief from the banks' troubled loans to less-developed countries, highly leveraged companies, and real estate swingers.
Carol Loomis
#47. In today's regulatory environment, it's virtually impossible to violate rules.
Bernard Madoff
#48. I'm increasingly inclined to think there should be some regulatory oversight, maybe at the national and international level just to make sure that we don't do something very foolish.
Elon Musk
#49. The evolvement of proteolysis as a centrally important regulatory mechanism is a remarkable example for the development of a novel biological concept and the accompanying battles to change paradigms.
Aaron Ciechanover
#50. I think we need to significantly reduce the regulatory burden on the private sector. The Obama administration is doing the opposite. They're loading on more and more regulation on the private respect to how the economy functions.
Dick Cheney
#51. [There is a] strong correlation between market freedom and lower government corruption
not terribly surprising, since the effect of increasing regulatory power is to shift 'cheating' from the private to the public sphere.
Julian Sanchez
#52. We pursued the wrong policies. George Bush is not on the ballot. Bill Clinton is not on the ballot. Mitt Romney is on the ballot, and Barack Obama is on the ballot. And Mitt Romney is proposing tax reform, regulatory reform, a wise budget strategy and trade. The president has proposed tax increases.
Glenn Hubbard
#53. For too long, the system has been biased in favor of oil and gas developers: sweetheart lease deals, generous subsidies and a regulatory process so slanted in favor of Big Oil that often permit reviews are simply waived.
Chellie Pingree
#54. If someone knows of a job creator anywhere in the world that's looking for a high, complex tax environment or looking for a high regulatory environment, I would like to meet them because I have yet to meet a job creator that's looking for that, and that's what we have.
Marco Rubio
#55. I think we will have continuing danger from these markets and that we will have repeats of the financial crisis - [they] may differ in details but there will be significant financial downturns and disasters attributed to this regulatory gap, over and over, until we learn from experience
Brooksley Born
#56. It is not human nature which can assign the variable limits necessary to our needs. They are thus unlimited so far as they depend on the individual alone. Irrespective of any external regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.
Emile Durkheim
#57. Regulatory failings mean that the cost of breaking the law is far below that of obeying it - businesses are happier to pay fines than to control pollution.
Ma Jun
#58. Conservatives ... are so opposed to government regulations that they are skeptical of anyone who identifies a problem that requires regulatory solutions - and they are inherently accepting of those who downplay such problems.
Joseph J. Romm
#59. One would think that the record of already existing regulatory agencies is sufficiently eloquent in showing that it is Big Business that does the regulating rather than vice versa .
Paul A. Baran
#60. We have to build the capacity of our institutions, employees and workers. Our regulatory environment has not been encouraging to research, innovation and enterprise.
Narendra Modi
#61. I actually think the civil service, who are the malignancy at the heart of public life, have consciously prevented, talked ministers out of, made it difficult regulatory-wise, to allow more pressure on alternative energy sources to grow.
Ken Livingstone
#62. [A]lthough there are many arguments that strongly support the establishment of a national securities regulator in Canada, it is not entirely clear that the regulatory response to the ABCP meltdown is among them.
Paul Halpern
#63. The motivation should come from regulatory enforcement, but enforcement is weak, and environmental litigation is near to impossible. So there's an urgent need for extensive public participation to generate another kind of motivation.
Ma Jun
#64. These elements are important for several reasons. First, offers in service negotiations may require the binding of existing regulatory situations, and countries should avoid scheduling legally binding measures that domestic regulators do not find adequate or fully developed.
Sebastian Saez
#65. So what are people actually referring to when they talk about "deregulation"? In ordinary usage, the word seems to mean "changing the regulatory structure in a way that I like.
David Graeber
#66. Our regulatory bodies strive to create honest dealings, fair trades, and a situation in which no one has an advantage over anyone else. But human beings aren't honest. And all trades are made because one person thinks he's getting the better of the other, and the other person thinks the same.
P. J. O'Rourke
#67. The goal of federal regulations should be to promote health and safety, but regulatory enforcement must be balanced with common-sense policies and assistance for businesses.
James Lankford
#68. In the case of a meltdown, the regulatory authorities may find themselves obliged to step in to preserve the integrity of the system. It is in that light that the authorities have both a right and an obligation to supervise and regulate derivative instruments.
George Soros
#69. San Francisco businesses face many challenges, including high rents, regulatory burdens, and the rising cost of workers compensation insurance and employee health plans.
Gavin Newsom
#70. We are looking for targets that have a tremendous strategic fit for the company. The colleges must have complementary education programs, have an excellent reputation, long operating history and solid regulatory compliance.
John Larson
#71. A state-based regulatory system is quite burdensome. It allows price controls to create market distortions. It can hinder development of national products and can directly impact the competitiveness of U.S. insurers.
Henry Paulson
#72. There are over 170,000 pages of regulations in Washington, D.C. I want to streamline the rules in the federal government to basically allow businesses to grow without fear of burdensome federal regulations. That's a passion to me, regulatory reform.
Jason T. Smith
#73. If you are going to start a regulatory regime from scratch, you'd design it to protect middle-and lower-middle-income people, because the opportunity for them to get ripped off was so high. Instead what we had was a regime where those were the people who were protected the least.
Michael Lewis
#74. You just can't get anything done. You can't get hearings, you can't get legislation, you can't get responses by the regulatory agencies - you can't get anything done. I'm a realist. I don't work harder and harder to get less and less.
Ralph Nader
#75. Without adjustments to our economic system and regulatory policies, we may be in for an extended period of social turmoil.
Jerry Kaplan
#76. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is continually reviewing its safety plan for the 100-plus operating civilian nuclear reactors in the United States. And when those plants were put into operation, they were required to have double and triple redundant safety systems.
Joe Barton
#77. We need a mobilized and active civil society using its purchasing power to demand sustainable products and practices. It is also essential that governments commit to the future, creating fiscal and regulatory conditions for sustainable policies to thrive.
Guilherme Leal
#78. Delayed energy projects and regulatory hurdles to domestic oil production not only cost the United States economy billions of dollars and millions of jobs, but they also stand in the way of an elusive goal: true American energy security.
John Hoeven
#79. They're the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and they will not do that. They will not pull the trigger.
Gray Davis
#80. The development of the food industry for both domestic and export markets relies on a regulatory framework that both protects the consumer and assures fair trading practices in food.
Gro Harlem Brundtland
#81. The comparison to the old world is something to get excited about. We have the potential for more choice and innovation, and a different regulatory environment that doesn't place as much weight on economic regulations of terms and conditions.
Michael K. Powell
#82. When the commission finds that a pig has entered the parlor, the exercise of its regulatory power does not depend on proof that the pig is obscene.
John Paul Stevens
#83. Clearly there are always unintended consequences of any legislative or regulatory act that's taken in the heat of battle.
Richard Grasso
#84. And, frankly, what happens out of Washington is, it creates a wind in my face, uncertainty over Obamacare, uncertainty over their tax policy, uncertainty over the regulatory policy.
John Kasich
#85. I believe that government is too large, costs too much, spends too much, and has too much regulatory power in our lives.
Tim Walberg
#86. We need to have a regulatory budget in America that limits the amount of regulations on our economy. We need to repeal and replace Obamacare, and we need to improve higher education so that people can have access to the skills they need for 21st century jobs.
Marco Rubio
#87. We have got so many regulatory laws already that in general I feel that we would be just as well off if we didn't have any more.
Calvin Coolidge
#88. And I think most people in this country want to see a president that's got the courage to say we're going to cut the tax burden, and reduce the regulatory climate, and we're going to get Americans working.
Rick Perry
#89. China is a political beast, with the Party at its heart, and the importance of political and regulatory due diligence cannot be overstated.
Jeremy Gordon
#90. Britain should be the world's number one center for genetic and stem cell research, building on our world leading regulatory regime in the area.
Gordon Brown
#91. We have lost certainty and predictability in the regulatory and tax climate in America, and this is why we're recovering so slowly.
Bob McDonnell
#92. Intel continues ... to abuse their monopoly, and that's why, around the world, governments and regulatory agencies continue to go after them.
Hector Ruiz
#93. I think global coordination is tremendously important. I hope we can see this happening through the G20 and through coordination of regulatory regimes around the world. I guess those are the main features of this bill that are important.
Robert F. Engle
#94. [T]he vast regulatory structure the federal government has erected in the name of the commerce power cannot be ended overnight, in many cases, but the pretense that such programs are constitutional can be ended, even as the programs themselves are phased out over time.
Roger Pilon
#95. Limited government, low taxes, controlled spending and debt, and a restrained regulatory environment make Texas work.
Mark McKinnon
#96. The goal of long-run economic growth without asset price bubbles is not only achievable, but is something we should expect if we put a sound regulatory framework in place and if policymakers remain vigilant.
Christina Romer
#98. Part of my mandate is to curb corruption and streamline a cumbersome, graft-ridden bureaucracy, to put resources where they will provide the clearest results, and to untangle a complicated regulatory environment.
Benigno Aquino III
#99. This country, of course, needs fundamental reform of our financial regulatory system, as I, and many other financial institution executives, have publicly advocated for a considerable period.
Stephen A. Schwarzman
#100. Regulatory fiat cannot create a market at a technologically interdependent interface. And by the same token, regulation and so-called monopoly power rarely prevail at modular interfaces between stages of value-added technology.
Clayton Christensen
