February 28, 2007
You Can't Keep A Bad Bush Down
As Genevieve argues, the Bush administration's post-election neutering has led them to redouble their efforts to cause havoc by way of executive orders. What that mainly means is screwing with the country's regulatory structure, tilting it towards business and away from consumer protections. So now, an administration political appointee* rather than career civil servant has to approve all regulations before they go into effect, a fairly chilling prospect. Additionally, market failures now need to be identified, a problem as not all regulations are aimed at correcting market failures -- some are directed at privacy protections, or quality of life increases.
*This isn't bad simply because it opens the process up to political distortion, but because political appointees often lack expertise. I recently sat next to a Department of Energy political appointee whose experience for working on nuclear power was being a member of the Bush/Cheney reelection team. It's easier to reject regulations when you're both ideologically opposed to them in principle and don't actually understand the failures they're remedying.
February 28, 2007 | Permalink
The Soviet Union had the decency to at least give these folks a proper title: Political Officer.
Even Navy vessels had one, to check for the political correctness of things on board the ship.
In the Soviet Armies, the duty of the political officers was to stand behind the lines and shoot any soldiers who were retreating. In their nuke missile forces, the Political Officer was one of the two who had the keys to launch, and the duty to shoot any military guy who refused to launch on order.
The effect of the Political Officer on the regular functions of government is pretty well understood. No one did anything until directed by the PO. It looks like that is Bush's intent as well.
As Cheney famously said: Elections have consequences.
Where is Gorbeshev when we need him?
Posted by: JimPortlandOR | Feb 28, 2007 6:22:13 PM
ANY WONDER MOST AMERICANS WISH BUSH WOULD JUST LEAVE OFFICE NOW. JUST PACK UP AND LEAVE.
Posted by: vwcat | Feb 28, 2007 7:03:20 PM
It's all about ideology and loyalty.
Posted by: ice weasel | Feb 28, 2007 7:40:04 PM
Personally, I would like to see Executive Orders go the way of the Dodo.
That being said, I just don't see the issue. You like 'em when they push *YOUR* agenda, don't you?
Posted by: Fred Jones | Feb 28, 2007 7:40:46 PM
It's interesting to me how much attention this provision of the executive order (having a political appointee serve as "regulatory policy officer") has gotten.
Certainly agencies such as EPA have had a "regulatory policy officer" for years. Do you really think a regulation of any significance can be issued without signoff from a political appointee?
Posted by: Doh | Feb 28, 2007 8:03:04 PM
You don't understand the game here, Doh.
Posted by: Fred Jones | Feb 28, 2007 10:11:28 PM
Seriously, what's the principle at stake here? Civil service reform was never supposed to keep the elected administration's hands off administrative policy, just administrative patronage.
Posted by: Senescent | Mar 1, 2007 12:10:45 AM
Fred's right. I'm fine, maybe even happy, with this. Two more years of the same old BS, and then we get the reins with a very effective way to crush resistance in bureaucracies that Bush has filled with incompetents and cronies. If we didn't have an effective mechanism, the damage could last decades. Right?
Too bad they didn't eliminate the filibuster as well.
Posted by: Sam L. | Mar 1, 2007 1:06:06 AM
The problem is that executive policy is not supposed to contravene THE LAW, as several appeals courts have found Bush's folks have done.
Constitution on the President: Take care that the laws are faithfully executed....
executed here means obeyed and carried out, not killed.
Posted by: JimPortlandOR | Mar 1, 2007 2:12:32 AM
Quibble--isn't privacy protection addressing a market failure? If a govt. agency screws up and releases people's personal agency, the cost is borne by the people whose information was released, not the agency itself--a clear externality. The same dynamic applies to private businesses that handle data insecurely.
Posted by: Dan Miller | Mar 1, 2007 10:28:05 AM
If you look at the order, it requires that a regulation address a specific market failure. Thus, for example, the Commissar could require regulators to identify the precise class of people whose economic well-being would be affected by privacy violations, along with the specific costs to businesses from implementing the regulations, and veto the reg if if couldn't be proved by "sound scientific methods" that the actual dollar cost to people losing their privacy would outweigh the cost to businesses. Don't have the money to do the studies and the modeling required (but oddly enough, some business group does, and their numbers say protecting privacy would bring on a depression), too bad.
(One of the big changes republicans made in the rules for classified information was to strike the rule that an official had to foresee _specific_ damage to national security from the release of some piece of information in order to keep it classified. They changed it so that you just had to believe that there could be some damage, type and nature unspecified -- made keeping stuff secret much easier. The above is just the flip side.)
Posted by: paul | Mar 1, 2007 12:16:36 PM
"he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed"
He has an obligation to uphold the law. Many laws require that regulations be passed only when it's reasonable, or any when the benefits outweigh the costs. Others specifically don't.
If the President doesn't want those types of laws, he should go to Congress and get the law reinterpreted.
It's deeply, deeply dangerous. Look at Massachusetts v. EPA. If the Bush administration wins on the statute (as opposed to on Standing), then the Next EPA administration could be blocked from regulating greenhouse gases, even though that clearly falls under the CAA as written. If they don't like it, they should pass a different law.
Posted by: MDtoMN | Mar 2, 2007 9:32:03 PM
Posted by: judy | Sep 26, 2007 11:08:20 AM
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