Whether it’s coal-fired power plants, automaker standards, ozone pollution, blood supply protection, mad cow disease prevention, tire safety, fuel integrity or worker safety and health, you can count on the Bush Administration. For the past four years, government regulatory agencies have been, according to OMB Watch’s
September report, “sleeping on the job,” “stuck in neutral,” “spinning their wheels,” “stuck in the mud,” “practicing bad medicine” and “withering on the vine.”
No single item in OMB Watch’s infuriating report is likely to surprise regulars here at Daily Kos. We’ve all heard one or more of these stories before. It’s the descriptions of foot-dragging and toadying and nickel-and-diming accumulated in one place that gives the report its clout.
Three examples:
Safety of the Blood Supply: The FDA abandoned a rule that would have required tracking systems to follow blood plasma products from the manufacturer to the recipient and would have made it possible to notify recipients in cases of recalls or potential contamination.
Worker Exposure to Tuberculosis: OSHA dropped work on a rule to protect health care workers from exposure to TB, favoring instead voluntary standards that employers can choose to implement or ignore.
Construction Runoff: Construction sites annually discharge an estimated 80 million tons of solids into U.S. waterways, but EPA abandoned (at the White House’s urging) work on a proposal to require an 80 percent reduction in storm water discharges during and after construction.
As spoken by the right, “bureaucrat” usually comes accompanied by spittle, as if the worker bee was to blame for the queen’s flaws. (As if the worker bee was involved in writing the regulations, a process the Administration has seen fit to outsource to the regulated companies.) Although I’ve had some experiences in government offices that would have landed me in a cell if I’d given free rein to my impulses, I’ve found most bureaucrats in protective agencies to be competent, hard-working and quite often dedicated to the ideals for which their particular operation was established. They don’t deserve opprobrium for their bosses’ policies anymore than a soldier does for her commander-in-chief’s arrogant ignorance. Indeed, what I’ve found talking “off the record” with mid-level folks at EPA and OSHA recently is what can only be described as utter disgust with the direction Bush has taken us in this arena. Naturally, they’re not saying this aloud.
A June
survey by Louis Harris commissioned by the Advocates for Auto and Highway Safety found that 91% of Americans say they want the government to set safety and health standards, not just when it comes to automobiles but in a variety of areas. Unsurprisingly consistent with similar surveys back to 1996. Of course, such opinions are known to change somewhat when dollar figures are attached to the regs, but no need to go into such contradictions here.
Anybody who encounters resistance over Kerry’s stance on Iraq while working the precincts or trying to persuade reluctant family to vote Democratic might find some fresh ammo in the OMB Watch report.