… and worker/consumer deadly. Once again, the GOP American Taliban will be pushing through their version of a “ jobs “ bill which will do away with many worker protections as well as consumer protections because as you and I know, regulations keep business from hiring new workers, as do higher taxes.
Reposted from Daily Kos Labor by Laura Clawson
Republicans want you to know they're preparing a jobs plan. In fact, not content with corporate tax breaks and tax breaks for the wealthy and small fry like that, they're going the extra mile and proposing a "jobs" plan that involves making you less safe, by making it virtually impossible to impose new government regulations or change existing ones. That would include the regulations that protect you from poison in ordinary consumer goods, keep you safe on the job, prevent Wall Street from crashing the economy every 10 minutes, and keep the air and water clean; to Republicans, the noteworthy thing about these regulations is that they stifle entrepreneurship. (Even if encouraging entrepreneurs was worth poisoning children, by the way, the allegedly dampening effect of regulations on business is significantly overblown by Republicans.)
The key piece of this so-called jobs push is the REINS act, which Republicans (and Evan Bayh) have been pushing for a while now. Noah Sachs wrote about it in February:
The bill would apply to any agency regulation with an expected annual economic impact of $100 million or more. Between 50 and 100 of these “major rules” are issued annually. Boehner dismisses them as “red tape,” but most are critically important, governing everything from food safety and housing discrimination to airline pilot training, accounting standards in financial statements, and air pollution control. Under the REINS Act, if just one house were to reject a rule, or simply didn’t act on it within the prescribed time period—70 legislative working days—the rule would be dispatched to the regulatory graveyard. Or, put another way, the bill would provide one house with veto power. [...] REINS Act supporters know full well that Congress would never be able to debate and vote on 50 to 100 major federal regulations each year (certainly not within the 70 day window for each one). Already, budget negotiations drag on for months, while battles over confirming a single federal judge can rage for a year or more.
People want jobs, so the claim is that this is jobs legislation. But if people wanted more yellow-haired clowns, Republicans would be out there selling this as a bill that would prevent the Obama administration from writing regulations that would force all clowns to have purple hair. Mostly, this is yet another case of Republicans trying to make the case that government doesn't work—by breaking the government by giving corporations free rein.
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