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Justice

House GOP Plans To Exploit Jobs Crisis To Permanently Shut Down The Federal Government’s Ability To Regulate

By Ian Millhiser on Aug 9, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Americans depend on federal regulators to keep them safe literally every single day. FDA regulations ensure that our medicines are safe, effective, and reasonably free from toxic side effects. Vehicle safety regulations allow us to buy cars that enable us to survive an accident. Before the federal government started regulating food safety, something as innocuous as a bottle of ketchup could contain a toxic mix of mold, rot, and spices added to cover up the flavor of decay.

And yet, House Republicans would effectively shut down these regulators’ ability to perform the most basic functions of their job:

The GOP will make a major push this fall for the REINS Act, which would require all major regulations to get a vote in Congress. [...] Unions and consumer groups are outraged over the REINS Act and have been lobbying against it.

They say it will severely delay regulations, increase corporate influence over health and safety rules through increased lobbying and allow politics to displace science. Especially problematic for them is a provision that if Congress does not approve a regulation within 70 days, it is cancelled and cannot be considered again.

House Republicans claim that REINS will simply provide an additional layer of congressional oversight before a federal agency can improve vehicle safety standards or reduce greenhouse emissions or streamline the FDA’s process for approving new drugs, but the actual effect of REINS would be to completely freeze much of the federal regulatory structure in place — permanently.

For one thing, while REINS’ chief sponsor claims that it would prevent new regulations from being filibustered in the Senate, the bill does not account for a loophole in the Senate rules. As a result, all but the most insignificant new federal regulations would be shut down completely unless they could somehow earn supermajority support in the Senate.

And even if the Senate somehow decided to put aside its partisan differences and start approving rules, it’s not even clear that it would have enough time to do so. Last year, the Senate simply sat on literally hundreds of bills that passed the House — many of them unanimously — because it didn’t have enough time to pass them. In 2010, federal agencies issued more than 90 new rules that would have required congressional approval within a narrow 70-day window if REINS were enacted. It’s anyone’s guess where Congress would find the time to approve all these rules.

Nor is it even clear how REINS would advance the right’s deregulatory agenda. As Sally Katzen, a former chief overseer of the federal regulatory process, points out, “Agencies sometimes propose eliminating outdated rules. But even these efforts at regulatory streamlining would nonetheless get caught in the REINS Act net, as deregulatory rules are nevertheless still rules.”

In short, REINS would place every major federal safety regulation, every agency’s major effort to rein in Wall Street, and even every major effort to reduce the burden of federal regulations in the hands of a body that just spent two months trying to decide whether to force America into a catastrophic economic default. If Congress can’t even agree to not blow up the entire U.S. economy, it unclear why anyone thinks that it could pass just one of the dozens of new measures REINS would require it to approve every year.

Economy

30 Years After Reagan Busted The Air Traffic Controllers Union, GOP Holds FAA Hostage Over Anti-Union Demands

By Travis Waldron on Aug 3, 2011 at 2:55 pm

Thirty years ago today, President Ronald Reagan threatened to fire almost 13,000 air traffic controllers unless they called off their strike and returned to work. He then followed through on his threat, firing most of the workers — represented by the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (Patco) — and banning them from the federal workforce for life. Today’s GOP is celebrating by holding another group of airline industry workers hostage over the party’s radical anti-union stance.

Republican demands that a measure making it harder for workers to unionize be attached to the re-authorization of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has led to the agency’s shutdown, costing the government more than $200 million a week, leaving 4,000 FAA employees and 70,000 construction workers out of work, and forcing airline inspectors to work without pay. And because Congress is now in recess until September, the shutdown is almost assured to last at least another month.

The FAA shutdown is the latest GOP effort to weaken unions at the federal and state level. And while Reagan broke Patco, a move that had many damaging and long-lasting effects on the American labor movement, today’s Republicans are going much further, according to Joseph A. McCartin’s editorial in today’s New York Times:

Over time the rightward-shifting Republican Party has come to view Reagan’s mass firings not as a focused effort to stop one union from breaking the law — as Reagan portrayed it — but rather as a blow against public sector unionism itself.

As McCartin points out, Reagan did not oppose public or private workers’ right to organize or collectively bargain, only the ability of public workers to strike. Reagan himself was a former union leader and led the 1960 strike of the Screen Actors’ Guild.

The GOP’s attempts to further weaken the labor movement, meanwhile, come at a time when union membership continues to shrink, thanks in large part to Reagan’s 1981 effort and Republican policies of the last 30 years. And the moves come at a time when American workers could benefit the most from robust unions.

Union members make more than comparable non-union workers, and a recent study tied declining union participation to rising levels of income inequality. Other studies show that returning to 1980 union membership levels would add more than $1,500 to the income of the average middle-class American worker.

Republicans still insist that they care about workers and ending America’s job crisis. Unfortunately, by standing up for airline companies and against the 74,000 people they have put out of work, their actions continue to tell a different story.

Economy

FAA Will Close at Midnight, Furloughing Up to 4,000 Workers

By Guest Blogger on Jul 22, 2011 at 6:45 pm

The Federal Aviation Administration will shut down at midnight after GOP senators refused to let go of an anti-union provision amending the National Mediation Board’s union voting rules. Speaking of the matter, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) lambasted his colleague Sen. Orinn Hatch (R-UT) on the Senate floor over the political manuevering, saying that Hatch is only presenting “one side of a story”:

We’re going to lay off 4,000 people at midnight tonight. Do you think that means anything to them? What I offered was a clean extension that didn’t get into the merits of this, which said let’s put this big debate aside and that debate aside and keep the agency working, the federal aviation administration. [Hatch] said, ‘No, you either take the Republican approach or else.’

And incidentally, he told you at the outset, the House Republicans have gone home. They’re gone. They sent this over and said, ‘Take it or leave it or close it down.’ That’s not a very sound choice for our country.

Watch it:

As a result of Congress’ failure to pass any sort of long-term funding deal for the FAA, around $2.5 billion worth of airport construction will cease and airlines will have to stop collecting around $200 million a week in ticket taxes. The up to 4,000 furloughed employees will include engineers, administrative assistants and computer specialists, but air traffic controllers will stay on duty.

–Sarah Bufkin

Politics

Minnesota Bars Running Out Of Beer Due To Government Shutdown

By Guest Blogger on Jul 13, 2011 at 8:30 pm

Around 300 bars and restaurants in Minnesota will not be able to buy alcohol until the state reaches a budget agreement and ends its government shutdown. Since closing down all but the most important services on July 1, the state has stopped issuing the $20 buyer cards required by retailers to replenish their alcohol inventories — bad news for Minnesotans already hurting from the cuts to their social services.

Restaurants are already reporting being low on inventories, and Frank Ball, the executive director of the Minnesota Licensed Beverage Association, calls the situation “crippling” to the alcohol retail industry. In an interview with Minnesota Public Radio’s Cathy Wurzer, Ball warned against beer spoiling in warehouses and bars closing:

Wurzer: “The penalty for buying or selling alcohol without this card is about $250 for the first offense. Do you think it might be wiorth it to some of these bars and restaurants and liquor stores and their providers for that matter to just kind of chance it and risk paying he fine?

Ball: “They’re sitting on millions of dollars worth of sales here, and they could be fined up to a thousand dollars for the suspension of their license for each event. But there’s nobody to enforce that law. So we don’t cover the wholesalers–that’s a decision they’ll have to make–but [with] our retailers, we’re telling them, if you’ve got a wholesaler that will sell to you, buy. Because otherwise if they run out of their product, our bars and restaurants are going to fold. They’re going to close.”

Along with losing their neighborhood bars, Minnesotans may also have to cope with the loss of MillerCoor’s 39 brands of beer. After misfiling its brand-label registration paperwork in June, the company could not procure the necessary documents from the state before its offices shut down a couple of weeks later.

But beer is only the latest victim in the state’s government shutdown debacle. Each day, Minnesota is losing $1.25 million from lottery sales and $200,000 from the closures of its state parks. By month’s end, the state coffers will be short $52 million it would have collected in tax revenues. And yet, as social services suffer and government workers idle without paychecks, lawmakers have made no movements recently toward a budget compromise. If the state legislature stopped focusing on politics and started focusing on people, we might start to see progress.

–Sarah Bufkin

Justice

California Lawmakers About To Lose Their Salaries Over Failure To Pass Budget

By Ian Millhiser on Jun 3, 2011 at 1:00 pm

The California Assembly Chamber

California isn’t exactly known for its sensible budget policy. The state’s long history of requiring supermajorities in order to raise taxes has turned it’s broken budget process into an international laughing stock. Nevertheless, California’s constitution does contain one very sensible provision — under a ballot initiative which was enacted last November, if lawmakers do not pass a budget by June 15, their salaries will be permanently docked:

[I]n any year in which the budget bill is not passed by the Legislature by midnight on June 15, there shall be no appropriation from the current budget or future budget to pay any salary or reimbursement for travel or living expenses for Members of the Legislature during any regular or special session for the period from midnight on June 15 until the day that the budget bill is presented to the Governor. No salary or reimbursement for travel or living expenses forfeited pursuant to this subdivision shall be paid retroactively.

California Comptroller John Chiang announced yesterday that the legislature has not yet complied with this provision, thus its members will lose their pay in two weeks if a new budget is not enacted. And, frankly, the federal government would be much improved if it took a page out of California’s book.

Earlier this year, the federal government came within inches of an economically catastrophic shutdown because right-wing lawmakers refused to fund the government unless they could exact some concessions from President Obama. This summer, the GOP could blow up the entire U.S. economy by forcing us to default on our debt unless Obama signs economically crippling spending cuts into law. Meanwhile, there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution or anywhere else in federal law that penalizes lawmakers who fail to complete must-do tasks like funding the government or raising the debt ceiling.

California’s pay-docking provision is a good idea, but it probably doesn’t go far enough. Many modern constitutions are designed to make it next to impossible for a government to cripple itself via inaction. Canada, for example, recently had to dissolve its entire government and hold a new election because it’s previous legislature failed to pass a budget.

But, in the United States, Speaker John Boehner, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), and their follow extortionists will suffer few personal consequences if they force us into the impossible choice of either killing Medicare or defaulting on our debts. Their jobs are guaranteed for two full years, and they can always retroactively pay their own salaries in the event of a shutdown. Worse, if Tea-drunk members of Congress bring us within inches of blowing up the nation’s economy, our Constitution contains no fail-safe to prevent catastrophe.

Politics

As Combat Troops Lose Paychecks, Dozens of Senators, Reps. Say They Will Forego Pay During Shutdown

By Guest Blogger on Apr 8, 2011 at 8:00 pm

With the government just hours away from shutdown and the Obama Administration already preparing to halt pay for combat troops and furlough 800,000 federal workers, dozens of members of Congress have announced that they will skip pay during a government shutdown.

More than twenty-four senators have already signed a pledge written by Sen. Jon Manchin (D-WV) promising to “forego my federal salary until we reach an agreement” by either returning it to the Treasury or donating it to charity. They’ve been joined by a bi-partisan group of House members, including Reps. John Boehner (R-OH), Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Colleen Hanabusa (D-HI) who say they will donate any pay they receive during the shutdown to charity.

Earlier this month, the Senate rejected a bill put forward by Sen. Barbara Box (D-CA) to cut off congressional pay in the event of a shutdown. President Obama and congressional leaders will still be paid even if they fail to reach a budget agreement tonight.

Meanwhile in a development military families have called “absolutely devastating,” combat troops will not receive pay during the shutdown. Furloughed civilians working at military bases are also at risk of losing their security clearance, and thus their jobs, if they run into financial trouble while out of work. The shutdown would also hamper the economic recovery, halting funding for basic infrastructure, blocking tax refunds and small business loans, and exacerbating state budget crises.

Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) has said she will not forgo her paycheck, telling MSNBC that “it’s very difficult for me to say, ‘Hey, I can give up my paycheck,’ because the reality is, I have financial obligations that I have to meet on a month-to-month basis that doesn’t make it possible for me.” Unfortunately many military families, and federal workers, have no choice but to give up their paychecks– and still face those monthly financial obligations.

– Kevin Donohoe

Politics

Kyl Walks Back Planned Parenthood Claim: It ‘Was Not Intended To Be A Factual Statement’

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Apr 8, 2011 at 6:45 pm

As ThinkProgress reported earlier today, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) defended Republicans’ willingness to shut down the government over funding for Planned Parenthood by falsely claiming that abortion is “well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does.” In reality, just three percent of its work is related to abortion. This afternoon, CNN brought on Planned Parenthood’s Judy Tabar to discuss his comment. During the interview, CNN anchor TJ Holmes relayed a statement from Kyl’s office walking back the comment, claiming the statement was not meant to be “factual”:

HOLMES: We did call his office trying to ask what he was talking about there. And I just want to give it you verbatim here. It says, ‘his remark was not intended to be a factual statement, but rather to illustrate that Planned Parenthood, a organization that receives millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, does subsidize abortions.’

Watch it:

Politics

Government Shutdown Would Force Recall Of Some Federal Workers Overseas

By George Zornick on Apr 8, 2011 at 5:45 pm

This morning on the Senate floor, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) tried to downplay the effects of a government shutdown, which now seems all but assured. Kyl said if there was a shutdown, it would likely be brief, and “while there would be some dislocations and inconveniences, I do think the media exaggerates a little bit the result of a shutdown over the weekend.”

Unfortunately, however, even a brief shutdown could have wide-ranging and expensive effects. The Constitution forbids any funds from leaving the U.S. Treasury if they haven’t been appropriated by Congress, and so all non-essential government services will cease immediately in the event of an appropriations lapse. In some cases, this means requiring federal workers all over the globe to return home immediately.

For example, NASA researchers in Greenland who are monitoring Arctic land and sea ice would have to return to the United States right away, and bring all of their equipment with them. Their work is aimed at quantifying the loss of Arctic ice due to global warming, and their mission may have to be abandoned entirely:

“ALL NASA IceBridge personnel now in Greenland would return home if there is a government shutdown,” agency spokesman Steve Cole said in an email yesterday.

That means sending NASA’s P-3B research plane back to the Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia’s eastern shore. The space agency’s King Air plane would return to its home at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.

Reassembling IceBridge scientists, planes and crew in Greenland would be “a pretty big production,” he said. “It takes several flights just for delivering people and cargo.”

It’s doubtful that NASA — which, like the rest of the federal government, has operated under a series of temporary funding measures since October — would be able to find the cash to pay for those flights.

Also, some overseas workers with with the Federal Trade Commission — which promotes consumer protection, and policies anti-competitive business practices — would also have to return home:

Those employees in a travel status, including those overseas on short and long-term assignments, will be contacted and instructed, as appropriate, either to stay where they are (although in a furloughed status) or to return to their duty stations at the earliest practicable opportunity.

Yesterday, Steve Benen reported that even the threat of a shutdown is forcing many government agencies to create contingency plans to take their websites offline, which will incur significant expenses.

The Republican position that this standoff is about spending is already hard to believe, since the amount of cuts have already been agreed upon and negotiations are stuck on “riders” that would restrict funding of women’s health services. It’s even further undercut by the fact the shutdown will actually increase government spending.

Related Posts

Climate Progress

GOP Threatens To Shut Down Government So Coal Companies Can Blow Up Mountains

By Brad Johnson on Apr 8, 2011 at 4:25 pm

With the government mere hours away from shutdown, the budget debate has centered around policy riders that GOP lawmakers insist must be included in any funding bill, most controversially involving Planned Parenthood funding. In an interview with CNN this morning, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) said Tea Party Republicans are also willing to shut down the government on behalf of mountaintop removal coal mining in the “down-to-the-wire federal spending-bill talks”:

Mountaintop mining was put on the table late in the game. Who knew that was going to lead to the shutdown of the federal government? You know, it would unconscionable at this stage not to avert a shutdown and the economic damage it would cause to this fragile recovery.

Watch it:

In February, the coal-powered House approved a number of amendments to the budget bill (H.R. 1) that would prevent the EPA from updating rules on mountaintop removal permitting, coal ash storage, emissions of coarse particulate matter, and a variety of other clean air and clean water safeguards. Three of these riders were aimed specifically at reversing the actions of the Obama Administration to strengthen permitting requirements for mountaintop removal mines — and thus reinstate the polluter-friendly rules set up by the Bush Administration.

Update

At The Green Miles, Miles Grant notes this coal-fueled assault comes even as Appalachian residents have come to the Capitol to stop the destruction of their homeland:

The move comes on the same week that over 150 citizens with the Alliance for Appalachia converged on Capitol Hill for the Week in Washington to end mountaintop removal.


Update

,Conrad now says that the GOP demands on mountaintop removal and greenhouse pollution have been taken off the table. “They’ve apparently backed off of that,” he told reporters.


Update

,WSJ reports there may be a rider ordering an economic study of limits on mountaintop mining:

Ms. Boxer said that the spending measure may include language ordering a study of the EPA’s efforts to regulate mountaintop-removal mining, which is common in Appalachia region and involves blasting off mountaintops to get at the coal underneath. “We’re working on the details,” Ms. Boxer said.


[upd

Security

Military Families React To Loved Ones Fighting For Free During Shutdown: ‘It Would Be Absolutely Devastating’

By Ben Armbruster on Apr 8, 2011 at 3:55 pm

If the White House and congressional leaders don’t get a budget deal done by midnight tonight, much of the federal government will shut down. U.S. troops will continue to work — and fight abroad — without any pay. While servicemembers will eventually receive back pay when the impasse is resolved, Defense Secretary Robert Gates noted yesterday that the interim period “can be a problem” for military families because many live paycheck to paycheck.

Stars and Stripes talked to some troops stationed overseas. “It’s very frustrating for the lower enlisted,” said Spc. Fotuotamatane Toluao, who is based in Germany. “I have a family to take care of, diapers aren’t that cheap,” he said. “There are half a million troops deployed to some ragged country who depend on their paycheck. Taking that away will turn our military upside down,” wrote one service member in Afghanistan on the Stars and Stripes website.

Back here at home, military families are worried, as evidenced by numerous local news reports from all around the country:

ARMY SGT, FORT CAMPBELL, KY: If they stopped both our paychecks that would definitely have a devastating effect.

MILITARY HUSBAND, SPOKANE, WA: It’s really important to me that their families who have a hard time anyway when dad is overseas, mom’s overseas that they have their, something certain, a paycheck.

NAVY WIFE, JACKSONVILLE, FL: I’d like answers. What am I supposed to tell my children when they ask, “Why don’t we have any money?” What am I supposed to – oh because they decided to shut the government down? My kids are 7, 5, 2 and 1 do you think they’re going to understand that?

MILITARY WIFE, DETROIT, MI: House payment’s got to be made. I mean bills got to be paid. … I’m stunned. I mean all the aid that we give to all these other countries and we can’t take care of our own?

MILITARY MOTHER, TOLEDO, OH: It would be absolutely devastating. … At the current time our household counts on Adam’s income because he is the sole provider for our rent and utilities and for the care of his daughter.

Watch the compilation:

While members of Congress said they would scramble to get a bill passed that would fund troops in the event a shutdown occurs, the Navy Federal Credit Union has said that it will otherwise advance servicemembers’ pay. Stars and Stripes reports that according to a statement, “Active-duty servicemembers belonging to the credit union would not see any change in their April 15 paychecks, even if the government fails to pay them.”

Cross-posted on the Wonk Room

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