Laying Of Landmines

We've been talking quite a bit about how Bush-Cheney will leave little landmines inside the government, codifying their vision of radical executive power, a hollowed-out set of regulatory agencies and a civil service dedicated to a deeply conservative vision. In a fantastic new article, the very first by the best hire the New York Times has made in the past decade, Charlie Savage (on this one he was aided by Robert Pear), we get another example of this in the area of regulatory rules changes.

The Bush administration has told federal agencies that they have until June 1 to propose any new regulations, a move intended to avoid the rush of rules issued by previous administrations on their way out the door.

The White House has also declared that it will generally not allow agencies to issue any final regulations after Nov. 1, nearly three months before President Bush relinquishes power.

Sounds harmless, right? Why would this provoke any outcry?

While the White House called the deadlines “simply good government,” some legal specialists said the policy would ensure that rules the administration wanted to be part of Mr. Bush’s legacy would be less subject to being overturned by his successor. Moreover, they said, the deadlines could allow the administration to avoid thorny proposals that are likely to come up in the next few months, including environmental and safety rules that have been in the regulatory pipeline for years.

So there are two rationales at work here. The deadline of tomorrow would make it virtually impossible to impose rules changes that have been sorely needed for years and on which the Administration have been dragging their feet. Some examples include the Labor Department updating construction safeguards and standards that industry and labor have already agreed to. They may have prevented crane accidents like the one we saw in New York City yesterday. Another example is a needed Department of Agriculture rule to put more stringent requirements on genetically modified crops.

The flip side to this is that getting rules changes completed outside the 60-day window for regulations to take effect after issuance will stop the future President's ability to postpone or revise them. And since official secrecy is a hallmark of the Administration, even finding out what these rules changes are will be a tortuous process for a new chief executive.

And what are some of those rules?

Rick Melberth, the director of regulatory policy for OMB Watch, a nonpartisan government watchdog group, predicted that the administration, in keeping with its longstanding skepticism about regulation, would make it a priority to complete rules that relax regulations on industrial pollution and other burdens on business.

Mr. Melberth also predicted that the administration would be willing to invoke the exception for “extraordinary circumstances” to allow rules that give businesses more flexibility than Mr. Bush’s successor might, especially if the next president is a Democrat.

“They get to define emergency,” Mr. Melberth said.

“On other things, they could do ‘Sorry, we can’t do anything on this’ ” because of the deadline, he added.

This is about the White House implementing and locking in their agenda to the bitter end, along the same principles of deregulation and laissez-faire capitalism that has put the entire economy in turmoil and put lives at risk from enivronmental decay and overall health and safety. The only figure outside the Administration quoted in the article praising the plan is a vice president of the US Chamber of Commerce. Just so you know where this is headed.

There's nothing all that insidious about this - the President can make rules changes whenever he wants. But the modus operandi for the final months of the Administration is clear: preserve as much of their agenda as possible, codify it, make sure the successor can't change it, and make sure there are enough malefactors installed throughout the government so that a Democratic President can be endlessly undermined. That and covering their own asses through things like immunity legislation in FISA is really all they're concerned about.