ADMINISTRATION KILLS REGULATIONS

Contracts Can Go To Corporations Operating Unsafe Work
Sites

WASHINGTON -- It was a classic stealth maneuver - and it worked. Two
days after Christmas, with President Bush at his Texas ranch and most
of official Washington on vacation, the White House announced the
rejection of regulations that would have barred companies which
repeatedly violate environmental and workplace standards from
receiving government contracts.

Few in the press noticed, and those papers that printed anything about
the decision buried the stories on inside pages. But this was no
trivial matter. A congressional report had found that in one recent
year, the federal government had awarded $38 billion in contracts to
at least 261 corporations operating unsafe or unhealthy work sites.
The regulations Bush killed were designed to stop that.

This is a classic example of the difference between the parties. These
particular rules were issued at the very end of the Clinton
administration, after being published in draft form 18 months earlier.

Former Vice President Al Gore had publicly promised organized labor he
would see that they were finished before he left that office.

Business opposed them, and Bush suspended them barely two months after
he moved in, finally killing them last week.

The move was a companion to the earlier 2001 action by the House and
Senate, both then controlled by the Republicans, in setting aside
Clinton administration regulations on ergonomics, designed to protect
workers from repetitive motion injuries. The Chamber of Commerce and
similar groups led the fight to spike them, too.

When I wrote about that action last March, I erred in saying Congress
could have rewritten the rules that business found objectionable,
instead of killing the whole package. Business lawyers later convinced
me that would have been virtually impossible.

But when the ergonomics rules were killed, the administration promised
that new, "more reasonable" regulations would be forthcoming. A phone
call to the Labor Department last week elicited the information that
no new regulations have been issued and no one could say when they
will be.

That is the game: Kill the rules you don't like quickly and quietly,
then take your sweet time writing new ones. Don't worry about how many
strained backs or stiff wrists people suffer in the meantime. And now,
don't worry if the companies that tolerate unsafe conditions are
getting fat government contracts at the same time.

Here's another example of why it makes a difference who is deciding
how the massive power of the executive branch is wielded: Last Oct.
25, 30 Drug Enforcement Administration agents raided the Los Angeles
Cannabis Resource Center and shut down its operations. The center had
opened five years earlier, after California voters approved a medical
marijuana initiative. It served patients with doctors' prescriptions
to use marijuana to alleviate the pain and nausea associated with
AIDS, cancer and other diseases.

The raid was perfectly legal; the Supreme Court has affirmed that
federal anti-drug laws, which cover marijuana, pre-empt more
permissive state laws or initiatives. But no one has stepped forward
to explain how busting up a center operating with the full approval of
the Los Angeles County sheriff and local officials became a law
enforcement priority for the federal government barely six weeks after
the terrorist attacks on this country.

Two months after the raid, no one has yet been charged with any crime
by the U.S. attorney's office. But the center remains inoperative, its
former patients forced to seek relief in the black market.

The White House complains constantly about Congress' irresponsibility
- - sometimes with good reason. But often it is Congress that sets the
executive branch right. The Bush budget of last April included a batch
of fiscally cosmetic but phony law enforcement cuts, including a
wipeout of the $60 million grant to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America
for programs in public housing projects and high-crime areas, strongly
endorsed by local police. Congress restored almost all those cuts and
raised the clubhouse appropriation to $70 million.

Last year, Bush urged Congress to pass a bankruptcy bill that would
make it easier for credit card and auto loan companies to squeeze
repayments out of people. Bills similar to one Clinton had vetoed
passed both the House and Senate, but have been stuck in conference -
in part because even the lobbyists were embarrassed to be pushing them
when so many small businesses and individuals have been hammered by
the recession and the aftershocks of Sept. 11.

Believe me, if Bush had been able to rewrite bankruptcy rules with a
stroke of his pen, as he did with the contracting regulations, it
would have happened by now.

Elections do make a difference.