Corporate Lobyists Move To Kill Safety Regs

From the New Standard:

The White House, in the form of it's Office of Management and Budget, is after safety regulations that cost corporations money. Last year it asked which Federal regulations were in need of reform and corporate lobbyists happily jumped at the chance. The OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs published a report last month that activists have dubbed the "anti-regulatory hit-list." It targets 76 federal regulations for "reform."

The Motor and Equipment Manufacturers Association requested lower standards for the clean-up of Polychlorinated Biphenyls, toxic chemicals identified by the EPA to cause cancer, immunological and neurological disorders.

A metal industry lobbying group advocated for allowing "more flexibility" in compliance with regulations on the emission of chromium, a toxin associated with lung cancer and ulcers.

The National Association of Manufacturers and other industry groups demanded "burden-reduction reforms" of the Environmental Protection Agency’s pollution reporting requirements -- namely, loosening standards for "the amount of [polluting] material that can be used without triggering a report."

The Small Business Administration sought to revise limits on the number of hours truck drivers can work without a break, in order to "save costs for businesses." The OMB estimated that the current regulation costs approximately $600 million more per year than the reported monetary value of the benefits associated with the rule, including preventing thousands of accidental deaths and injuries.

Saving $600 million is more important than preventing thousands of deaths and injuries? Why on White House logic, if we weigh the billions in costs against the 3,000 dead at the WTC, the US should never have begun the fightback against terrorists.

Does anyone on the Right want to stand up and defend this attitude publicly?

House and Senate Republicans are gleefully co-operating in the rape of agencies that ensure quality of life, handing ever more power to the White House in order to emasculate these agencies. In several cases - even though federal courts had determined that considerations of immediate financial cost should be very much secondary to public safety and the (usually more difficult to quantify)economic benefits of a healthy, safe nation - failure to report "the monetary costs, benefits, and net benefits" of a safety regulator is being used as a reason to cut it's budget.

There's much more too. It's worth a read to discover how corporations are setting the agenda for the White House and the Republican Party are falling into line like sheep.

So here is compassionate conservatism - it means accounting for dollars, not lives. That's official, from the White House itself.