
Anti-Regulatory, Anti-Worker Bills Pass House
by Guest Blogger, 5/29/2004
The House advanced the regulatory rollback this month by passing five bills, one of which threatens safeguards across the board while the other four specifically target workplace health and safety protections.
The first of these bills, subtitled the "
HREF="http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:h.r.02432:">
Paperwork and Regulatory Improvements Act of 2004," authorizes a pilot project for "regulatory budgeting" at three of five public health, safety, or environment agencies. Although modified somewhat from its
first draft, in part because of
pressure from the White House, the bill managed to leap from subcommittee and move through mark-up in the full House government reform committee with its essential character intact.
Among
other things, the bill lays the groundwork for "regulatory budgeting," a dream of rationing protections of public health, safety, and environment by limiting the total amount of costs to industry from regulation. The bill would also require the Office of Management and Budget to submit its annual report on the costs and benefits of regulation as part of the White House's budget submissions, thus hiding the anti-regulatory projects launched each year through that report by burying it under the complexity of budget issues.
Democrats on the government reform committee attempted to weaken the bill through a series of amendments:
- One would have eliminated the regulatory budgeting study altogether.
- Another would have required OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs to make all stages of its interventions in the regulatory process open to the public. Although OIRA is now more open than it has been, it still insists on keeping secret its discussions with industry and other special interests in the early stages of regulatory activity.
- Two amendments would have fixed the factual preamble of the bill by noting the weaknesses in a study that purports to measure the burden of regulation and by pointing out the administration's record increase in paperwork.
