Remarks by the President in Presentation of the Medal of Honor to Staff Sergeant Clinton L. Romesha

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

East Room

1:40 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT:  Good afternoon.  And on behalf of Michelle and myself, welcome to the White House.

Every day at the White House we receive thousands of letters from folks all across America.  And at night, upstairs in my study, I read a few.  About three years ago, I received a letter from a mom in West Virginia.  Her son, Stephan, a Specialist in the Army, just 21 years old, had given his life in Afghanistan.  She had received the condolence letter that I’d sent to her family, as I send to every family of the fallen.  And she wrote me back.  “Mr. President,” she said, “you wrote me a letter telling me that my son was a hero.  I just wanted you to know what kind of hero he was.”

“My son was a great soldier,” she wrote.  “As far back as I can remember, Stephan wanted to serve his country.”  She spoke of how he “loved his brothers in B Troop.”  How he “would do anything for them.”  And of the brave actions that would cost Stephan his life, she wrote, “His sacrifice was driven by pure love.”

Today, we are honored to be joined by Stephan’s mother Vanessa and his father Larry.  Please stand, Vanessa and Larry. (Applause.)  We're joined by the families of the seven other patriots who also gave their lives that day.  Can we please have them stand so we can acknowledge them as well.  (Applause.)  We're joined by members of Bravo Troop whose courage that day was driven by pure love.  And we gather to present the Medal of Honor to one of these soldiers -- Staff Sergeant Clinton L. Romesha.

Clint, this is our nation’s highest military decoration.  It reflects the gratitude of our entire country.  So we’re joined by members of Congress; leaders from across our Armed Forces, including Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marty Dempsey, Army Secretary John McHugh, and Army Chief of Staff General Ray Odierno.  We are especially honored to be joined by Clint’s 4th Infantry Division -- “Iron Horse” -- soldiers, and members of the Medal of Honor Society, who today welcome you into their ranks.

Now, despite all this attention, you may already have a sense that Clint is a pretty humble guy.  We just spent some time together in the Oval Office.  He grew up in Lake City, California -- population less than a hundred.  We welcome his family, including mom and dad, Tish and Gary.  Clint -- I hope he doesn’t mind if I share that Clint was actually born at home. These days, Clint works in the oilfields of North Dakota.  He is a man of faith, and after more than a decade in uniform, he says the thing he looks forward to the most is just being a husband and a father. 

In fact, this is not even the biggest event for Clint this week, because tomorrow, he and his wife Tammy will celebrate their 13th wedding anniversary.  Clint and Tammy, this is probably not the kind of intimate anniversary you planned.  (Laughter.)  But we’re so glad that you’re here, along with your three beautiful children -- Dessi, Gwen and Colin.  Colin is not as shy as Clint.  (Laughter.)  He was in the Oval Office, and he was racing around pretty good.  (Laughter.)  And sampled a number of the apples before he found the one that was just right.  (Laughter.)  

Now, to truly understand the extraordinary actions for which Clint is being honored, you need to understand the almost unbelievable conditions under which he and B Troop served.  This was a time, in 2009, when many of our troops still served in small, rugged outposts, even as our commanders were shifting their focus to larger towns and cities.

So Combat Outpost Keating was a collection of buildings of concrete and plywood with trenches and sandbags.  Of all the outposts in Afghanistan, Keating was among the most remote.  It sat at the bottom of a steep valley, surrounded by mountains -- terrain that a later investigation said gave “ideal” cover for insurgents to attack.  COP Keating, the investigation found, was “tactically indefensible.”  But that’s what these soldiers were asked to do -- defend the indefensible.

The attack came in the morning, just as the sun rose.  Some of our guys were standing guard; most, like Clint, were still sleeping.  The explosions shook them out of their beds and sent them rushing for their weapons.  And soon, the awful odds became clear:  These 53 Americans were surrounded by more than 300 Taliban fighters. 

What happened next has been described as one of the most intense battles of the entire war in Afghanistan.  The attackers had the advantage -- the high ground, the mountains above.  And they were unleashing everything they had -- rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machine guns, mortars; snipers taking aim.  To those Americans down below, the fire was coming in from every single direction.  They’d never seen anything like it. 

With gunfire impacting all around him, Clint raced to one of the barracks and grabbed a machine gun.  He took aim at one of the enemy machine teams and took it out.  A rocket-propelled grenade exploded, sending shrapnel into his hip, his arm, and his neck.  But he kept fighting, disregarding his own wounds, and tending to an injured comrade instead.

Then, over the radio, came words no soldier ever wants to hear -- “enemy in the wire.”  The Taliban had penetrated the camp.  They were taking over buildings.  The combat was close; at times, as close as 10 feet.  When Clint took aim at three of them, they never took another step.

But still, the enemy advanced.  So the Americans pulled back, to buildings that were easier to defend, to make one last stand.  One of them was later compared to the Alamo -- one of them later compared it to the Alamo.  Keating, it seemed, was going to be overrun.  And that’s when Clint Romesha decided to retake that camp.

Clint gathered up his guys, and they began to fight their way back.  Storming one building, then another.  Pushing the enemy back.  Having to actually shoot up -- at the enemy in the mountains above.  By now, most of the camp was on fire.  Amid the flames and smoke, Clint stood in a doorway, calling in airstrikes that shook the earth all around them.  

Over the radio, they heard comrades who were pinned down in a Humvee.  So Clint and his team unloaded everything they had into the enemy positions.  And with that cover, three wounded Americans made their escape -- including a grievously injured Stephan Mace.

But more Americans, their bodies, were still out there.  And Clint Romesha lives the Soldier’s Creed -- “I will never leave a fallen comrade.”  So he and his team started charging, as enemy fire poured down.  And they kept charging -- 50 meters; 80 meters -- ultimately, a 100-meter run through a hail of bullets.  They reached their fallen friends and they brought them home. 
Throughout history, the question has often been asked, why? Why do those in uniform take such extraordinary risks?  And what compels them to such courage? You ask Clint and any of these soldiers who are here today, and they’ll tell you.  Yes, they fight for their country, and they fight for our freedom.  Yes, they fight to come home to their families.  But most of all, they fight for each other, to keep each other safe and to have each other's backs. 

When I called Clint to tell him that he would receive this medal, he said he was honored, but he also said, it wasn't just me out there, it was a team effort.  And so today we also honor this American team, including those who made the ultimate sacrifice -- Private First Class Kevin Thomson, who would have turned 26 years old today; Sergeant Michael Scusa; Sergeant Joshua Kirk; Sergeant Christopher Griffin; Staff Sergeant Justin Gallegos; Staff Sergeant Vernon Martin; Sergeant Joshua Hardt; and Specialist Stephan Mace.

Each of these patriots gave their lives looking out for each other.  In a battle that raged all day, that brand of selflessness was displayed again and again and again -- soldiers exposing themselves to enemy fire to pull a comrade to safety, tending to each other’s wounds, performing “buddy transfusions” -- giving each other their own blood.

And if you seek a measure of that day, you need to look no further than the medals and ribbons that grace their chests -- for their sustained heroism, 37 Army Commendation Medals; for their wounds, 27 Purple Hearts; for their valor, 18 Bronze Stars; for their gallantry, 9 Silver Stars. 

These men were outnumbered, outgunned and almost overrun.  Looking back, one of them said, “I’m surprised any of us made it out.”  But they are here today.  And I would ask these soldiers -- this band of brothers -- to stand and accept the gratitude of our entire nation.  (Applause.)

There were many lessons from COP Keating.  One of them is that our troops should never, ever, be put in a position where they have to defend the indefensible.  But that’s what these soldiers did -- for each other, in sacrifice driven by pure love.  And because they did, eight grieving families were at least able to welcome their soldiers home one last time.  And more than 40 American soldiers are alive today to carry on, to keep alive the memory of their fallen brothers, to help make sure that this country that we love so much remains strong and free. 

What was it that turned the tide that day?  How was it that so few Americans prevailed against so many?  As we prepare for the reading of the citation, I leave you with the words of Clint himself, because they say something about our Army and they say something about America; they say something about our spirit, which will never be broken:  “We weren't going to be beat that day,” Clint said. “You're not going to back down in the face of adversity like that.  We were just going to win, plain and simple.”

God bless you, Clint Romesha, and all of your team.  God bless all who serve.  And God bless the United States of America.

With that, I’d like the citation to be read.

MILITARY AIDE:  The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, March 3rd, 1863, has awarded in the name of Congress the Medal of Honor to
Staff Sergeant Clinton L. Romesha, United States Army, for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty:

Staff Sergeant Clinton L. Romesha distinguished himself by acts of gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as a Section Leader with Bravo Troop, 3rd Squadron, 61st Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, during combat operations against an armed enemy at Combat Outpost Keating, Kamdesh District, Nuristan Province, Afghanistan on October 3rd, 2009. 

On that morning, Staff Sergeant Romesha and his comrades awakened to an attack by an estimated 300 enemy fighters occupying the high ground on all four sides of the complex, employing concentrated fire from recoilless rifles, rocket propelled grenades, anti-aircraft machine guns, mortars and small-arms fire.  Staff Sergeant Romesha moved uncovered under intense enemy fire to conduct a reconnaissance of the battlefield and seek reinforcements from the barracks before returning to action with the support of an assistant gunner. 

Staff Sergeant Romesha took out an enemy machine gun team, and, while engaging a second, the generator he was using for cover was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade, inflicting him with shrapnel wounds.  Undeterred by his injuries, Staff Sergeant Romesha continued to fight, and upon the arrival of another soldier to aid him and the assistant gunner, he again rushed through the exposed avenue to assemble additional soldiers. 

Staff Sergeant Romesha then mobilized a five-man team and returned to the fight equipped with a sniper rifle.  With complete disregard for his own safety, Staff Sergeant Romesha continually exposed himself to heavy enemy fire, as he moved confidently about the battlefield engaging and destroying multiple enemy targets, including three Taliban fighters who had breached the combat outpost’s perimeter. 

While orchestrating a successful plan to secure and reinforce key points of the battlefield, Staff Sergeant Romesha maintained radio communication with the tactical operations center.  As the enemy forces attacked with even greater ferocity, unleashing a barrage of rocket-propelled grenades and recoilless rifle rounds, Staff Sergeant Romesha identified the point of attack and directed air support to destroy over 30 enemy fighters. 

After receiving reports that seriously injured soldiers were at a distant battle position, Staff Sergeant Romesha and his team provided covering fire to allow the injured Soldiers to safely reach the aid station. Upon receipt of orders to proceed to the next objective, his team pushed forward 100 meters under overwhelming enemy fire to recover and prevent the enemy fighters from taking the bodies of their fallen comrades. 

Staff Sergeant Romesha’s heroic actions throughout the day-long battle were critical in suppressing an enemy that had far greater numbers.  His extraordinary efforts gave Bravo Troop the opportunity to regroup, reorganize and prepare for the counterattack that allowed the Troop to account for its personnel and secure Combat Outpost Keating. 

Staff Sergeant Romesha’s discipline and extraordinary heroism above and beyond the call of duty reflect great credit upon himself, Bravo Troop, 3rd Squadron, 61st Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division and the United States Army.

(The Medal of Honor is awarded.)  (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, thank you, everybody.  Most of all, thank you for Clint and the entire team for their extraordinary service and devotion to our country. 

We're going to have an opportunity to celebrate and there’s going to be a wonderful reception -- I hear the food around here is pretty good.  (Laughter.)  I know the band is good.  And Colin really needs to get down.  (Laughter.) 

So, enjoy, everybody.  Give our newest recipient of the Medal of Honor a big round of applause once again.  (Applause.)

END 
2:10 P.M. EST

Check out all the ways you can get involved with President Obama's State of the Union Address.

With less than three weeks before devastating, across the board cuts - the so-called "sequester" - are slated to hit, affecting our national security, job creation and economic growth, we must make sure we are having a debate over how to deal with these looming deadlines that is based on facts- not myths being spread by some Congressional Republicans who would rather see these cuts hit than ask the wealthiest and big corporations to pay a little bit more.

President Obama urges Congress to act to avoid a series of harmful and automatic cuts—called a sequester—from going into effect that would hurt our economy and the middle class and threaten thousands of American jobs.

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How Ohio’s Plan To Privatize Prison Food Could Lead To Deadly Riots

In an effort to cut costs, Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) is planning to hire a private food vendor to feed 50,179 inmates in the Ohio prison system. The administration argues the decision to outsource prison food will save as much as $16 million a year.

Motivated by a huge state deficit, Ohio has become a laboratory in prison reform — with mixed results. The state sold a prison to Corrections Corporation of America, a private prison company, in 2011, only to discover abysmal conditions far below state standards in sanitation, food quality, hygiene, and health care. However, Ohio’s new sentencing reforms are saving the state millions while diverting nonviolent offenders away from prison and into educational and rehabilitative programs.

Ohio’s taste for privatization is likely to make prison food even less appetizing than it already is. Private vendors can skimp on food quality, quantity, and staff in order to make a profit. Unlike state-run cafeterias, private vendors servicing juvenile detention facilities can skip the federal nutrition guidelines for school lunches:

The state Department of Youth Services, which has 469 youths at four detention facilities, spends $6.18 million a year, or $27.60 per inmate per day for food service, said spokeswoman Kim Parsell. The costs are higher because youths don’t help with food prep or cooking, the meals adhere to federal guidelines for school lunches and the teen-aged detainees have higher caloric needs, she said. The state receives $5.51 per day per youth as reimbursement from the national school lunch program. Switching to a private vendor is expected to save DYS about $1.2 million a year, she said.

The Ohio Civil Service Employees Association, the union that represents some 10,000 prison workers, warns that a contractor will pay lower wages, hire fewer people and dish out less food to make a profit. Roughly, 450 state workers in DYS and DRC could end up losing their jobs, though some could apply for other state jobs or perhaps be hired by the contractor.

Tim Shafer, OCSEA operations director, said complaints about inmate food may sound like whining but they contribute to the safety and security of a prison.
“As a former corrections officer, I can tell you one of the best things in the world is a full inmate. They want to sit down and chill out,” Shafer said. Inmates are fed a heart healthy diet that features a rotating menu of dinners such as sloppy joes, fajitas, and chicken and biscuits.

Poor food quality and sanitation have sparked multiple deadly riots at private prisons run by corporations like CCA and GEO Group. In one prison, inmates were fed soup filled with worms, while other prisons served burritos and brownies contaminated with human feces.

The cost-saving claim of the plan is also dubious; Ohio’s last flirtation with Aramark in 1998 ended because the company insisted on being paid by daily inmate count rather than by actual meals served, which drove up costs by $2 million.

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NBA Star Calls Out Homophobia On Twitter

One of the most famous players in the National Basketball Association, Kobe Bryant, took to Twitter on Sunday to tell a fan to stop using ‘gay’ as an insult.

After a man identifying as Michael on Twitter tweeted “you’re gay” at another person, the LA Lakers shooting guard called them both out on Twitter — in a tweet that elicited over 3,000 retweets and 2,000 favorites:

Just letting you know@PacSmoove @pookeo9 that using “your gay” as a way to put someone down ain’t ok! #notcool delete that out ur vocab

— Kobe Bryant (@kobebryant) February 11, 2013

Bryant has clearly come a long way from a few years ago, when he called the referee at a game a “fucking fag.” That action incurred a $100,000 fine from the NBA, and actually prompted the association to run a series of PSAs from famous basketball players encouraging fans to stop “using gay to mean dumb or stupid.” Someone on Twitter called Bryant out on that during Sunday’s interraction, and Bryant jumped to point out how that experience informed his opinion:

@onepercentofone @pookeo9 exactly! That wasn’t cool and was ignorant on my part. I own it and learn from it and expect the same from others

— Kobe Bryant (@kobebryant) February 11, 2013

Compared to the hostility toward gay people in other sports, the NBA has been relatively progressive about LGBT issues. Just last week, Denver Nuggets player Kenneth Faried came out for marriage equality in his team’s state of Colorado, and major NBA figureheads, such as former All-Star Charles Barkley, have voiced support for same-sex marriage, acknowledging that, “I had gay teammates.”

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7 States Cut Unemployment Insurance, Costing Jobless Workers Federal Benefits Too

A combination of federal and state unemployment insurance programs kept 2.3 million Americans out of poverty in 2011, mitigating some of the negative effects the Great Recession had on jobless workers. But even as unemployment remains stubbornly high, several states are taking the axe to their unemployment programs, and the result is that recipients are losing federal unemployment insurance too.

Seven states have reduced the length of their unemployment programs from 26 weeks, the standard since the 1950s, by as much as 14 weeks, according to a new policy paper from the National Employment Law Project. But because federal benefits depend on the number of weeks offered at the state level, those cuts are also costing workers access to the federal program. In those states, five of which have unemployment rates higher than the federal level, those cuts are costing individual recipients as much as $5,000, according to NELP:

The average jobless worker has been unemployed for 35 weeks, and 40 percent of unemployed workers have been out of a job for at least 27 weeks, meaning the cuts will hammer large numbers of the unemployed in these states. While opponents of unemployment insurance decry the “culture of dependency” the program creates, research shows that recipients work harder to find a new job than those who don’t have access to the program.

America’s unemployment program, stingy as it is, also has benefits for the economy: the Congressional Budget Office estimated that failure to extend the federal program at the beginning of the year would have cost the country 300,000 jobs.

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As George Tiller’s Wichita Clinic Reopens, ‘After Tiller’ Reframes The Abortion Debate

In Mother Jones today, Kate Sheppard has the news that Dr. George Tiller’s abortion clinic in Wichita, shuttered after he was murdered at his church in 2009, will be reopening under the leadership of Julie Burkhart, who worked with Tiller when he was alive. In Burkhart’s conversation with Sheppard, she says that she decided to reopen the clinic in part because no one else would do it, and because she wants to reframe the debate about abortion care. “I think abortion is about motherhood,” she said. “Abortion is about motherhood because by and large women coming in to have abortions are concerned about the kind of life and the future for their children. Women are thinking in a very responsible manner when choosing that.”

These are important points, and ones made at greater length in one of the best documentaries I saw at the Sundance Film Festival in January, After Tiller. By first-time directors Martha Shane and Lana Wilson, After Tiller spends time not just with the four remaining doctors in the United States who are willing to perform late-term abortions—Burkhart’s clinic will not—but with many of their patients. It’s a set of perspectives that rarely enters the national debate about the legality of abortion procedures. The testimony of women and men who badly wanted children who have grown too sick to survive, and of doctors who help them when almost no one else will, may not convince the people who protest outside the four doctors’ clinics, and for whom the questions involved have simple and obvious answers.

But for anyone else watching the film, it will be clear, as Dr. Susan Robinson says, that no one ever wants an abortion, particularly not the kind that she and her colleagues provide. And the doctors in After Tiller are providing their services not out of some sort of attraction to the procedure that’s become their calling card, but out of a conviction that women shouldn’t be abandoned in their decision-making processes. After Tiller is a powerful reminder that abortion in America is less about desire than about need, and a matter not of carelessness, but the result of dreadful deliberations.

Many of the patients who agreed to have their consultations with the doctors filmed in After Tiller are facing the prospect of aborting children they planned to have, but whose pregnancies have gone terribly awry along the way. “It just didn’t seem fair to her,” say the parents of one child who would live in agonizing pain if she were born. Another describes a dreadful dilemma, saying “It’s guilt because we’re doing what we’re doing and guilt because if we brought him into this world he wouldn’t have any quality of life.” Monica, a patient whose child was diagnosed at 25 weeks with a debilitating illness that would cause his certain death if he were born, ultimately chooses to have an abortion rather than delay an inevitable decision to end her child’s life—better now, she ultimately decides, than to make him suffer before turning off his respirator so she can have had the experience of his brief, agonizing life. “It is hurtful because it was a planned pregnancy, and I did want this,” another patient explains.

Much of the focus of the consultations and on the planning for these families’ abortions is focused on giving them dignity and helping them process their emotions, both before and after their procedures. “The only time they get to say hello to their baby is when they have to say goodbye to it, too,” Dr. Robinson explains. As she runs through a checklist to help a couple prepare for their abortion and the burial arrangements for their child, I started to cry in the theater when the shot showed that “blanket requested” was one of the options on the list. There’s an incredible cruelty to the genetic lottery that forces parents to convert receiving blankets to burial shrouds, and an incredible courage to those parents who have their only time with a child after that child has died. Dr. Shelley Sella counsels two couples with ill children together, telling them “Both of you have babies who are really sick, and both of you have babies who would suffer a lot,” and giving them an opportunity to see that their experience is neither solitary nor shameful.

Even beyond the difficulty of the decision to have a late-term abortion itself, the procedure is daunting. Susan, a counselor who does intake at Dr. Robinson and Dr. Sella’s clinic in Albequerque, talks one patient through the fact that she’s going to have go through an actual labor and delivery. There’s no question that process is draining. But as Susan explains it, it’s necessary precisely to preserve the patients’ childbearing ability for future, unclouded pregnancies. “We want to make sure you can make a family when you cant to have a family,” she says. There’s none of the horribly stereotypical glee—much less moral distance—anti-abortion protestors ascribe to the doctors and patients whose lives they make difficult. “The woman delivers a baby. And it’s a stillborn. And that’s hard to deal with,” Dr. Sella reflects. “I think the reason that I’ve struggled is I think of them as babies. I don’t think of it as a fetus. That’s a way to distance myself from what I do.”

After Tiller also does something interesting in making clear that there are abortions the doctors won’t perform, or that they truly struggle with performing. Dr. Robinson turns down a patient from France who is 35 weeks pregnant, but has no fetal abnormalities—the woman essentially had delayed dealing with her pregnancy while traveling—and Susan counsels her to consider adoption as an alternative instead. The two women also debate whether or not Dr. Robinson should perform a procedure for a 16-year-old, pro-life Catholic who was afraid to tell her mother she was pregnant, in part because Susan is worried that the girl’s mind truly isn’t made up about having an abortion, and that her regret later could be psychologically damaging. Dr. Robinson only decides to go forward when the patient convinces her that she is determined to have an abortion.

But it’s an illustration of the challenges that stem both from respecting a woman’s decision-making process when she, herself, may not have made up her mind, and from legal requirements in some states that patients convince doctors that their pregnancies threaten them. “Kansas law required the patient to present you with a story that compelled you to believe that this pregnancy would threaten her life…I found myself being faced with patients who didn’t have the compelling reasons they had in Kansas…Where does it come from that I get to say, ‘well, why?’” Dr. Robinson asks. “What if you’re just not a good storyteller?…What I believe is that women are able to struggle with complex ethical issues and make the best decisions for themselves and their families.”

In After Tiller, there are real costs to helping women make some of the worst decisions any of us could ever be faced with, and to helping them see those choices through with compassion. Some of the doctors have paid prices in blood, whether it’s the loss of Tiller, a friend and mentor to all of them, the threats that have become sharper to Dr. Hern as he’s started his second family later in life, the stable owned by Dr. Leroy Carhart, which was burned down in 1991, killing 21 horses who were borded there, or simply the lost prospect of retirement in a world where no one appears willing to replace them.

But they persist, telling rape victims they deserve justice, telling families who are shattered by the loss of a wanted child that they owe it to themselves to be kind and to avoid self-recrimination, and performing medical procedures that echo the work many of them did bringing life into the world. Without ever needing to state it directly, After Tiller makes a forceful point that’s too easily forgotten or obscured in political debates about abortion. It’s easy to “pray for healing” for women who are having late-term abortions. But it’s abortion doctors who provide these women and their partners real physical and mental care.

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Regulatory reform necessary for economic growth

By Former Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) and Dan Danner, president and CEO, National Federation of Independent Business - 02/11/13 02:30 PM ET

As we survey the horizon and consider the issues that lawmakers today are faced with, the natural conclusion is that the 113th Congress will be another challenging period for our political leaders.

Eleventh-hour deal-cutting, once a rare occurrence, is now standard operating procedure for a broken legislative process. This new regular order of brinksmanship provides little in the way of certainty to job creators; instead, it guarantees that just a few months down the road, Congress will once again return to dramatic 11th bickering, posturing and legislative clashes.

Unfortunately, even the most successful fiscal compromise is no match for the long-term recuperative impact of substantive economic growth on our nation’s budget and deficit issues.

No partisan divide exists when it comes to the question of whether lawmakers should pursue policy that facilitates growth. And one of the surest paths to facilitating growth – and encouraging the stability that investors and job creators need to build that growth – is to reform our arcane and inefficient regulatory system.

Inefficient, redundant and excessive regulations have had a pronounced destabilizing effect on job growth and recovery. The system is grossly outdated, and it is laden with too many regulations that were put in place and long ago forgotten.
Despite this, a tidal wave of new rules are being advanced.  Since Election Day alone, Washington has issued over 800 new rules – that is over 8 new regulations daily.
Unfortunately, many of these proposed new regulations aren’t fully thought through and poorly structured. According to a recent George Washington University and Washington University analysis, in 2012 there were 283,615 full-time government employees dedicated to drafting and enforcing regulations, while fewer than 50 employees at the Office of Management and Budget were responsible for reviewing the new regulatory mandates to ensure they are justified and accurate prior to implementation.
It should not surprise anyone, then, that employers large and small are choosing not to invest, expand and hire because of the uncertainty surrounding the current regulatory system.

Additionally, NFIB’s January Small Business Economic Trends report shows red tape to be the second most important issue facing small business owners today; while a recent NAM NFIB Poll found that two-thirds of respondents say economic uncertainty in the market makes it hard for them to grow and hire more workers causing economic stagnation.

And while sweeping last-minute deals like the one passed as a solution to the fiscal cliff generate headlines, rapidly shifting, unpredictable promulgation of regulations represent a destabilizing factor that have hung over our economy for decades.

Fortunately, the goal of modernizing and improving this system is both politically attainable and broadly supported by the public.

In order to better meet the goals of both preserving and protecting safety and the environment and stabilizing the economic landscape, our regulatory system should be adapted for the 21st Century and seek to be efficient, accountable, and fair:
· Improved risk assessment, for instance, would ensure that the best available scientific data was at the heart of every regulatory push.
· Commonsense cost-benefit analysis can and should be incorporated into the rulemaking process so that regulations strike the right balance between the benefits they bring to society and he costs they impose.
· Regulatory reform should also include an honest and transparent peer review process that ensures objective experts have the ability to shape rules before they are enshrined into law.
· Every rule should be subjected to ongoing review – through the courts and Congressional oversight – in order to ensure that the system functions in a way that is responsive to both needed improvements.
· Federal agencies should prioritize compliance over enforcement and place greater emphasis on promoting compliance than they do on issuing harsh penalties, particularly on small businesses.

?Reforms that meet these goals are within reach.
Political theater, no matter how compelling, will not fix what ails our economy. Growth, driven by small businesses around the nation, will necessarily be the engine that carries our economy beyond the periodic fiscal catastrophes that have defined our recent experience. ??Washington can help spur economic growth today by putting in place a regulatory system that not only allows, but also encourages, a new economic expansion.
Lincoln, a former Democratic Senator from Arkansas, chairs the Small Businesses for Sensible Regulations Coalition. Danner is president and CEO of the National Federation of Independent Business, the nation's leading small business association.

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How Dental Coverage Falls Short For Low-Income Americans

Four-year-old Torrie Smith, a little girl in a low-income Colorado household, suffers from devastating dental health issues. Her plight could have been avoided with regular preventative dentist check ups, which would have been free for Torrie under Medicaid — but her mother Wendie didn’t know about the dental health benefits afforded to Torrie under the public insurance program until it was far too late.

Torrie’s issues underscore the considerable gaps in America’s dental health coverage system. Dental insurance remains elusive even for many who have employer-sponsored health coverage — some estimates peg the number of Americans forgoing dental care at over 100 million, with children and the poor being disproportionately affected. That’s particularly bad news considering that dental problems are lifelong problems, and poor dental health early on in life leads to a status quo in which over a quarter of elderly Americans over the age of 65 lose all of their teeth.

And as the Coloradoan reports, even Medicaid beneficiaries face a dearth of coverage due to low reimbursement rates for dentists accepting Medicaid patients:

State Medicaid data reported to the federal government show that less than half of the 453,000 Coloradans under age 21 who were eligible for benefits in federal fiscal year 2011 received some kind of dental service. Only a quarter of Colorado counties met a 2010 state goal of getting at least 44 percent of Medicaid-eligible residents under age 19 to visit a dentist, according to an I-News analysis of state records.

“Dental disease is not self-resolving,” says Diane Brunson, director of public health for the University of Colorado’s School of Dental Medicine. “It’s not like catching a cold and you put up with it for a week or 10 days and you’re fine. You have to get treatment. And it’s so much more beneficial all the way around — to the child, to their family, to taxpayers — if dental problems can be prevented.”

While the state appears to be making strides in improving its numbers, part of the problem is the paucity of dentists willing to see Medicaid children. Only 10 percent of Colorado’s 3,500 or so dentists are considered “significant” Medicaid providers, meaning that they are reimbursed for at least 100 visits per year. Moreover, 20 of Colorado’s 64 counties do not have a dentist who accepts Medicaid.

A large part of the problem has to do with a lack of knowledge regarding essential health care benefits, which leads to the vast majority of Americans not claiming preventative dental care that they are eligible for. “When she came along,” Wendie said of Torrie, “they gave me a (Medicaid) card and said it was for her doctor visits. They didn’t say dental or anything like that.” That’s nothing new when it comes to Americans and their preventative care benefits — only one in five Americans in high-deductible insurance plans know that much of their preventative care is free.

But as the Coloradoan’s article points out, it also has to do with Medicaid’s historically low reimbursements for doctors. Since states share a considerable amount of authority along with the federal government when it comes to determining Medicaid’s budget, the program is often an easy target for budget cuts. But those cuts carry with them a considerable human cost for some of America’s poorest residents. As ThinkProgress has consistently reported, that makes implementing Obamacare’s optional Medicaid expansion a medical imperative for the American poor — but as Torrie’s story shows, educating families about the care that they are eligible for is just as important.

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