Some very positive news regarding the Bush Administration's 11th hour attempts to push through and finalize many of their disastrous energy and environmental regulations.
And whom do we have to thank for this good news?
President Smarty Pants 1.0, Bill Clinton (whose stock has rebounded significantly for me). He had the critical foresight to set up a loophole just in case something like this happened...
Relevant Rhino also posted on this mere SECONDS before I.
If you recall, it was reported prior to the election that Bush was feverishly attempting to finalize a list of new regulations regarding environmental and energy policy that they assumed would be a nearly impossible bureaucratic nightmares for a Democratic Congress to undo.
From the Los Angeles Times on October 31st
......The White House is working to enact an array of federal regulations, many of which would weaken rules aimed at protecting consumers and the environment, before President Bush leaves office in January.
The new rules would be among the most controversial deregulatory steps of the Bush era and could be difficult for his successor to undo. Some would ease or lift existing constraints on private industry, including power plants, mines and farms.
Those and other regulations would help clear obstacles to some commercial ocean-fishing activities, ease controls on pollutants that contribute to global warming, relax drinking-water standards and lift a key restriction on mountaintop coal mining.
Once such rules take effect, they typically can be undone only through a laborious new regulatory proceeding, including lengthy periods of public comment, drafting and mandated reanalysis.
Apparently there is a little known law enacted by our good friend and former President, Bill Clinton that will make it much more difficult for Bush and his environmentally challenged cronies to slip this past the goalie via the Congressional Review Act of 1996.
And gues what? IT CAN'T BE FILIBUSTERED!
Via Politico today:
President Bill Clinton finalized regulations within 60 days of the 2001 inauguration, meaning Bush could come in and easily reverse them.
It could take Obama years to undo climate rules finalized more than 60 days before he takes office — the advantage the White House sought by getting them done by Nov. 1. But that strategy doesn’t account for the Congressional Review Act of 1996.
The law contains a clause determining that any regulation finalized within 60 days of congressional adjournment — Oct. 3, in this case — is considered to have been legally finalized on Jan. 15, 2009. The new Congress then has 60 days to review it and reverse it with a joint resolution that can’t be filibustered in the Senate.
In other words, any regulation finalized in the last half-year of the Bush administration could be wiped out with a simple party-line vote in the Democrat-controlled Congress.
Of course the Bush Administration denies that they are doing anything under-handed, they are just doing their jobs like any honest, hard-working civil servants...
"We are not rushing regulations through at the last minute. We are simply continuing our responsibility of governing until the end of the president’s term," said White House spokesman Carlton Carroll.
Thankfully, Ed Markey, my boy from Massachusetts, is having none of it...
House Global Warming Committee Chairman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) is also looking at it. "On egregious rule-makings that would have a detrimental effect on energy and environmental policy, [the CRA] speeds up the process for rescinding the bad rule," said Markey spokesman Eben Burnham-Snyder. "It’s something Markey is seriously looking into."
This is a HUGE development. Without this provision, undoing the most horrifyingly destructive and most controversial (de)Regulations that Bush and Cheney handed to their oil and coal cronies would take a very very long time to undo.
And yes, environmentalists are cheering.
The environmental lobby would cheer such a move. "It seems like everyone in the world wants to throw themselves in front of this bus," said Sierra Club lobbyist Dave Hamilton, who added that the organization supports any attempt to derail the Bush rules. "You just [think], ‘Haven’t you done enough?’"
"If these rules are overturned, the benefits for the environment are potentially significant," said Rick Melberth, director of regulatory policy at OMB Watch, a liberal regulatory watchdog group.
So take a moment and thank Preisdent Smarty Pants 1.0 for helpingPresident Smarty Pants 2.0 get off to a smooth start.
We now have even more reason to hope