Drunken Orange Speaker Gets Another Anti-Jobs Bill Passed-- This One To Gut All Regulations

A few days ago we covered, as we often do, the right-wing, Koch-funded jihad against the rules and regulations that protect workers, consumers and the environment from the deprecations of irresponsible corporations (i.e., the real GOP base). Today Boehner has been tweeting and crowing for hours how his caucus united to pass something so extreme in it's anti regulatory fervor that respected Republican former Science Committee chairman Sherwood Boehlert had to wonder aloud if his party has just gone completely insane.

The House is moving forward with three bills that would cripple the regulatory system.  The bills are not going to become law this Congress, but they show how far a party in thrall to its right-most wing is willing to veer from what has long been the mainstream. The critical question is whether and when more moderate voices-- centrist Republicans in Congress, sensible business leaders and the largely centrist American public-- will recognize the damage being done and raise their voices to call it to a halt. Clearly, that’s not going to happen in the House itself.
           
No one would argue that the regulatory system is perfect or that it’s some holy apparatus from which mere lawmakers should keep their distance.  But overall, it accomplishes what Congress set it up to do-- it protects the public, produces benefits that outweigh costs, and has, according to most studies, a neutral to slightly positive effect on employment. And as we continue to suffer through a bank-induced recession, it shouldn’t take leaps of imagination to understand the harm inflicted when the system fails to do its job.
          
Yet the bills before the House would prevent the system from working: they are a recipe for failure. The bills are sometimes described with the mild term “regulatory reform” but these measures have as much to do with reform as Communist re-education camps had to do with education.  

In the case of the REINS Act, in particular, the analogy is all too apt: “reform” is simply a euphemism for an effort to break the system and remake it according to ideological prescription that will leave it permanently hobbled.                 
           
Anyone who wants to understand what the right wing’s project is truly about need look no further than the REINS Act, sponsored in the Senate, tellingly, by Rand Paul. The bill would require Congress to approve all major rules. This would mean, among other things, that Congress would be the arbiter of each and every significant regulatory matter, no matter how technical, and that a single chamber of Congress could kill any rule. 

It is not hard to predict the result-- a virtual shutdown of the system that will leave the public exposed. Decision-making would be less rational and more random than anything that happens now because the formalities imposed by agency procedures and judicial review would no longer govern.
           
One doesn’t need to guess at the results because we’ve already tried a system like this. The regulatory system developed, starting in the late 1800s, precisely because a system that vested this much daily decision-making in Congress simply didn’t work. 

If you think that the very notion of having, say, a Food and Drug Administration is a mistake, then REINS makes perfect sense.  Otherwise, it’s hard to credit. And it’s hard to see how even business would be better off without expert agencies like the FDA, which provide a degree of predictability and consumer confidence for business.
           
And Congress doesn’t need REINS to control the regulatory system; it can already intervene to block any rule (and is not reluctant to do so), and it writes the laws that determine what gets regulated. And it’s ironic that people who say they got elected to change the regulatory system can at the same time claim that no one holds Congress accountable. Their real complaint is that not everyone agrees with them about how the system should work.
           
The other bills before the House don’t go as far as REINS-- nothing could, short of just eliminating every regulatory agency entirely-- but they are animated by the same attitudes, and it’s no accident that they’re being brought up as a group.

They are all different ways to gum up the works.  And in some ways they contradict each other: REINS seeks to weaken regulatory agencies and to make Congress the locus of all decisions, while the Regulatory Accountability Act (RAA) gives the agencies and the courts more responsibility. The only straight line between those two opposite points leads to regulatory breakdown.

...The Republican Party should be spending its time trying to improve what is basically an effective system, figuring out how to improve protections and reduce costs. But the House is off on a very different path, ignoring experience in favor of ideology, working to destroy a system that has protected business as well as the public.  It’s high time for those in the center to call them on that.

This piece of crap bill won't pass the Senate. If it did, President Obama would veto it. No difference between the two parties. It passed today 241-184, every Republican voting YES and every Democrats (except for extreme right Blue Dogs-- Barrow, Boren, McIntyre and Peterson) voting NO. Piss you off? Consider helping Blue America defeat Blue Dogs. Last year we took down Bobby Bright, the one with the worst voting record in the House. Next year... well, Barrow's a possibility. Shuler is too. And so are Matheson, McIntyre, Costa, Cooper... If we raise enough money, we'll go after all of 'em.

The drunken Speaker keeps calling it a "jobs bill." An actual jobs bill that he's unlikely to ever allow to come up for a vote is the one introduced by today by Nick Rahall, II (D-WV), ranking Member on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Committee that seeks to strengthen Buy America laws and would require Federal agencies to be more transparent in reporting where taxpayer dollars are being spent. The Alliance for American Manufacturing has been leading the charge for years and their Executive Director Scott Paul told his members that "Buy America laws have been weakened over time by loopholes and other exemptions that result in more of our tax dollars being sent to purchase steel and manufactured goods made overseas. There are also numerous gaps in our infrastructure spending programs where a Buy America preference does not currently exist. As a result, the American public has been shocked to learn that their tax dollars are increasingly being used to source steel and manufactured goods from factories in China and other countries.”

The bill’s introduction comes as Congress is in the midst of writing a new surface transportation reauthorization bill and grappling with ways to create jobs and improve a sluggish economy. Buy America preferences are the best way to ensure that domestic manufacturing companies and American workers benefit when hard-earned tax dollars are being spent on the nation’s infrastructure needs. According to research conducted for the Alliance for American Manufacturing, maximizing the use of domestic content with a Buy America preference yields a 33 percent increase in manufacturing job creation. In addition, polling conducted for AAM earlier this year shows that 91 percent of voters support Buy America policies to ensure that taxpayer-funded projects use only American-made goods and materials. Taking a closer look, support for Buy America was spread evenly across ideological, geographic, and political backgrounds-- from 94 percent among Democrats, to 89 percent among Tea Party supporters.

The Invest in American Jobs Act of 2011 (H.R. 3533) would ensure that, when possible, all of the iron, steel, and manufactured goods used to build and repair our nation’s roads, bridges, highways, railways, and other infrastructure are produced in the United States.

•    Strengthen Coverage. The bill strengthens Buy America preferences that exist for a range of transportation programs, including highways and bridges, public transit, high-speed and intercity passenger rail, and aviation.

•    Expand Coverage. The bill applies Buy America to transportation and infrastructure investments that currently are not normally covered, such as railroad loans and loan guarantees, water infrastructure grants, EDA grants, and FEMA mitigation grants.

•    More Transparency. The bill requires Federal agencies to be transparent and, through annual reporting, provide the public with an accurate accounting of the instances when Buy America is waived, the amount of federal dollars sent overseas, and where that procurement occurs. The bill also would require Federal agencies to post requests for waivers of Buy America preferences on the official Internet website of the agency so that the public can see and give comments. Before granting a waiver, the relevant agency must publish a reasoned justification for the waiver in the Federal Register and respond to any public comments. All of this transparency will bring much-needed accountability to the waiver process and finally let American companies and workers have a say before a waiver takes effect.