What federal rulemaking power has to do with the economy

Make Me Smart January 17, 2024 Transcript

Note: Marketplace podcasts are meant to be heard, with emphasis, tone and audio elements a transcript can’t capture. Transcripts are generated using a combination of automated software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting it.

Kimberly Adams 

Hello, everyone. I’m Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make today make sense.

Kai Ryssdal 

I’m Kai Ryssdal. Today is Wednesday 17 January.

Kimberly Adams 

Today, we’re gonna do some news and then some smiles. So let’s get going. Kai, you first you seem to have very newsy things.

Kai Ryssdal 

Well so, this is a case that hopefully people have read or heard about, but I just want to emphasize for a minute, it’s in the Supreme Court today, 17 January, they’re doing arguments in a case about nominal nominally, it’s about commercial fishermen. But in reality, it’s about this thing called the administrative state and something called the Chevron deference. I don’t want to get all wonky here. But it has been the practice for decades, going on four decades now, based on a Supreme Court decision of the mid 1980s, that regulatory agencies in the government, which are stocked with experts on every subject under the sun, are entitled to some degree of deference, when relevant laws and regulations are called into question, because they are the experts. The case in the Supreme Court today sets about to challenge what is called the Chevron deference. And there are some justices on the court who seem ready to overturn that practice or doctrine. And I will just say this, the administrative state, the regulatory agencies and the experts there in, are how this economy runs, its why and how we have things like clean water. It’s why and how we have things like the Securities and Exchange Commission. It’s why and how we have things that make the economy go round. And it will be pandemonium if the Chevron deference is overturned pandemonium.

Kimberly Adams 

And to just give a few more details as to why it would be pandemonium. This deference basically says that when Congress passes a law, if it is not explicit in how to handle something that comes up in the enactment of that law, that the courts are going to defer to what the agency says, that’s how they get the rulemaking done. And whenever something that’s not perfectly clear in the law, an agency can go ahead and decide without having to go back to Congress, because as Kai just said, experts upon experts on experts. So, without this deference. Imagine, every time something is not explicitly laid out in the law, having to go back to Congress for a decision on, the Congress we have that doesn’t really get a lot done anyway. For every single little nuance of every single law, and you have to imagine that interested parties would leap upon this to and, of course, rollback. I mean, you can imagine the amount of rulemaking and you know, that that would be rolled back if this thing is overturn. It’s a huge deal. It sounds pretty wonky. I’ve been watching this for a couple months, as you know, but it’s wild. It’ll be interesting if they can find a narrow way to rule on it, because I’m sure it’s what they’re trying to do. They’re like, how can we rule? Right, especially the conservatives on the court are probably trying to figure out a way to rule on this to basically get the federal regulatory state to back off without upending the entire economy.

Kai Ryssdal 

Right, we’ll see if they can do it. Just super quick, I want to follow up on yesterday, my note about the Chinese economy growing at 5.2% this year, that was the expectation and the actual numbers came out this morning. It’s a little bit of a you know, cloud and a silver lining or whatever the thing is, growth in China actually was 5.2%. But just quoting from Bloomberg here, a slew of indicators for home prices and property related spending disappointed while deflation remains stubborn. So, it is growing but all is not well in the Middle Kingdom. So there you go. Alright, what are you got?

Kimberly Adams 

It’s a quick bit of news, but then I’m going to be like you and have a rant. I picked an article from Politico but it’s all over. CNN has canceled its New Hampshire Republican primary debate, because Nikki Haley said that she did not want to participate unless Donald Trump or Joe Biden was there. She wasn’t interested in just debating DeSantis. It’s probably, it’s part of her overall narrative that it’s now a two person race between her and Trump, which is an interesting bit of messaging given Iowa, but whatever. Trump has skipped all of the debates. And now the remaining candidates on the GOP side are not debating. Biden is not debating any of his challenges on the Democratic side, and the Democrats aren’t really allowing much of a real primary process anyway. And I think that this is probably unless something drastic happens, the end of the presidential debates. And I want to highlight why that matters. Because, yes, it’s a prestige thing for the cable networks and the TV programs and the journalists who get to moderate it. But these are not panel discussions, they are debates. And they are are pretty much the only time we have during a campaign, whether it be and this is trickling down to lower races as well, like House races and Senate races and other races. This is the only opportunity that people have to see candidates running for the same office, talk to each other and actually debate each other as to why they would do something better than another. Yes, the moderators are there to prod topics and to force them to talk about issues that they may not want to talk about. And so, if you run into a candidate on the campaign trail, their handlers may get them away from you and stop journalists from asking them questions about hard topics. Or they may make a comment that if the other candidate was there, they would counter. But what happens when you don’t have debates is that these candidates only talk about what they want to talk about, when they want to talk about it with no fact checking or filtering, and no fact checking. And they get to run any response to what their competitors say against them through their messaging machine, right? And I think we lose a lot when we don’t see candidates debating each other. And I think it’s a real loss. And sure, you can get a little bit of it from the town halls where at regular voters and constituents can go and challenge candidates, but it’s not the same, and you’re not getting them against each other. And that means that all we’re going to get in terms of candidates actually addressing each other, and, and countering each other is going to be filtered messaging, run through all sorts of focus groups, and all sorts of fake narratives. And maybe there’ll be like, “Oh, well, you said this. But here’s this clip that my research team dug up from 15 years ago that counters this,” as opposed to deeply engaging on the issues. And I think we lose something with that. Rant done.

Kai Ryssdal 

No. Well, let me give you a yes, but. I agree with very much of what you said. Except I would add this caveat, I think what you said applies at, when we get to the stage where the Commission on Presidential Debates actually hosts the debate between the major party candidates. I think it’s not unreasonable to point out that the intra party debates at the primary stage for the last number of rounds have become nothing like actual debates. They are mudslinging contests. They are posturing and preening. They are they are gripes and moans, and virtually devoid of substance. Do you disagree?

Kimberly Adams 

I think it depends. I actually think some of these GOP debates, at least with some of the early Republican candidates were meaningful. They allowed different candidates to shine in different formats. I mean, we’re thinking back to like the 2016 race, when there were way too many people on stage and you couldn’t make sense of anything or even in early rounds. I still think there’s value even if it is just to show, you know, who actually has something to say. But I also think that groups have gotten better at navigating that. I mean, after the first couple of rounds of that there started to be rules about who could participate. And that seemed to help. But I mean, we’re not going to have the Commission on Presidential Debates, debates because Trump’s not gonna participate. He didn’t participate last time.

Kai Ryssdal 

Right. Right. Yeah. Look, your general point I agree with.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah. All right. Let’s do some smiles.

Kai Ryssdal 

All right, go ahead. You go first.

Kimberly Adams 

I was so excited today when I saw articles popping up, saying rumors are circulating that James Webb has discovered life on another world. But then as soon as I saw that article, I saw an RS technical article, an Ars Technica article that says “No, the James Webb Space Telescope hasn’t found life out there—at least not yet.” Rats. But there is a debate, and I love when you can get these little windows on sort of like internal debates within very niche communities. But anyway, I’ll read a bit from Ars Technica, “The rumors have been out there for a while now percolating through respectable corners of the astronomy and Astro biological community that the James Webb Space Telescope has found a planet with strong evidence of life. Some of the sentiment recently bubbled into public view when the British news magazine The Spectator published an item titled ‘Have we just discovered aliens?’ In accordance with Betteridge’s law of headlines, the answer to the question posed in this headline is no. Anyway, but is it a hard no? That’s a more difficult question.” So apparently, there’s going to be a paper coming at some point that they expect will have “strong evidence for a biosignature on an exoplanet very soon.” And they have a quote from a British astronaut who says “Potentially, the James Webb Telescope may have already found, you know, alien life.” It says that “they don’t just want to release or confirm those results until they can be entirely sure, but we found a planet that seems to be giving off strong signals of biological life.” Of course, the folks at Ars Technica talked to NASA and says, “JWST has not found definitive evidence of life on an exoplanet. It is anticipated with JWST observations may lead to the initial identification of potential biosignatures that could make habitability more or less likely for a given exoplanet. Future missions will be needed to conclusively establish the habitat, how do you even say that, habitability of an exoplanet.” Anyway, it’s all very excited. I got much more excited at the beginning than I was at the end. But nevertheless, I’m waiting for these papers. I’m waiting for this news. I’m excited. It’s life is out there, man. Otherwise, it would be a waste of space. Right? That’s right.

Kai Ryssdal 

Alright, so mine’s a little closer to home. Christine Lagarde, the head of the European Central Bank, formerly the head of the International Monetary Fund, was at a Bloomberg thing up in Davos at the World Economic Forum. And she was asked about the American elections, which as we all know, are shaping up to be rematch between Joe Biden and former President Trump. And here’s what she said: “The US election? Yeah, let me have some coffee.” Let me have some coffee. Now, Christine Lagarde, who I’ve interviewed a couple of times, she’s super funny. She was also known critic of Donald Trump. She has pointed out some of the errors of his economic ways. But, you know, she’s got a sense of humor too. And I just thought that was like a little clip, made me laugh.

Kimberly Adams 

One of my favorite clips, I can’t even remember where it was from. But it was after Trump’s would have installed his children as political advisors. And there was some forum where it was like Janet Yellen, Christine Lagarde and a bunch of other just top economic figures in the world, standing at some conference talking to each other and Ivanka Trump trying to like sidle into the conversation. And all of them just ignoring her. Yep. And it was just like, that made me chuckle. Maybe that’s petty. But I was just like, what are you doing? Really?

Kai Ryssdal 

Totally. Yeah, that’s absolutely right. Absolutely right. Well, there you go.

Kimberly Adams 

Ah, that is it for us today. We will be back tomorrow. Until then you know how to get a hold of us. You can send us your thoughts, questions, comments or little clips of audio you would also like us to respond to makemesmart@marketplace.org. You can also leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-Smart.

Kai Ryssdal 

Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletter. Today’s program was engineered by Charlton Thorp. Thalia Menchaca is our intern.

Kimberly Adams 

Ben Tolliday and Daniel Ramirez composed our theme music. Our senior producer is Marissa Cabrera. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcast and Francesca Levy is the Executive Director of Digital.

Kai Ryssdal 

And there we go.

Kimberly Adams 

There we go.