Wealth & Money Quote by Dick Cheney

Cheney’s line reads less like a policy proposal than a power map: government is cast as dead weight, the “private sector” as the rightful engine of national life. The phrasing does a lot of quiet work. “Regulatory burden” presumes regulation is inherently punitive, not protective; “significantly reduce” signals urgency without naming which rules, which industries, or which harms are acceptable collateral. It’s a familiar rhetorical dodge: specificity would invite accountability.

The pivot to Obama isn’t just partisan contrast, it’s an attempt to define an entire administration as economically unnatural. “Doing the opposite” frames deregulation as the default, regulation as deviation. Then comes the piling-on imagery: “loading on more and more regulation.” It evokes a bureaucratic avalanche, a state growing obese on paperwork. The slip - “on the private respect” - is telling too. Even in the stumble, “private” is the object to be defended, the thing being acted upon by an overreaching “they.”

Context matters. Coming after the 2008 financial crisis, the Obama years were defined by efforts like Dodd-Frank and tougher environmental and consumer rules, aimed at curbing exactly the sort of risk-taking that markets, left alone, had recently spectacularly mispriced. Cheney’s intent is to keep the crisis narrative from becoming a mandate for structural reform. Subtext: the problem wasn’t laissez-faire failure, it was government interference - and any attempt to referee markets is, by definition, an assault on growth.

As a former vice president of an era closely aligned with energy and defense interests, Cheney is also defending a governing philosophy that privileges corporate autonomy. The quote works because it offers a simple villain and a simple cure, while leaving the messy question - who regulation protects, and from whom - safely offstage.