Features » August 18, 2008

Feeding the Beast (cont’d)

By controlling regulatory officers, the Bush administration has put a 'political watchdog' on the inside. With the stroke of a pen, Bush has usurped control of all government rulemaking.

The free-market regulator

Less than four months after signing Executive Order 13422, Bush appointed Susan Dudley as head of OIRA during a congressional recess in April. (The consumer group Public Citizen had spent the previous year fighting the appointment, decrying Dudley as an “anti-regulation zealot.”)

Dudley’s background made her a strange choice. Prior to her nomination, she directed the Regulatory Studies Program at the Mercatus Center, a free-market think tank that advocates limited government regulation. In a 2005 Mercatus policy brief, Dudley referred to regulations as “a hidden tax on Americans.”

The think tank — which receives funding from ExxonMobil — has been criticized for downplaying the risks associated with global warming. Several months after Dudley’s appointment, Mercatus issued a white paper defending Executive Order 13422.

Seven months before her recess appointment, Public Citizen, together with OMB Watch, issued a 68-page report on Dudley, highlighting positions she has taken against the Occupation Safety & Health Administration (OSHA), the EPA and the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC).

“Not since OIRA was created … has there been a less appropriate nominee,” Gary D. Bass, OMB Watch executive director, said in the report.

Supporters of Dudley’s appointment, including Heritage Foundation’s Senior Fellow on Regulatory Policy James Gattuso, vigorously defended her, while simultaneously confirming the basic premise of her critics’ concern.

“Dudley’s work shows that she is not so much prejudiced against regulation as wary of it,” he wrote in a 2006 Heritage Foundation paper. “Dudley will bring to the job a wariness of new rules and an expertise in analyzing rules’ likely effects, both of which are appropriate, even essential.”

Untangling the knot

Whoever takes over the White House will face the monumental task of undoing some 30 years of bureaucratic layering that has seen the number of political appointees grow from 400 in 1961, to roughly 3,000 today. In a recent article for the Politico, Light warned that unless the next president begins fixing government, he will preside over “a string of meltdowns that will make the federal response to Hurricane Katrina look like a minor mistake.”

Many legal scholars, including Frederick Schwarz Jr., senior counsel of NYU Law School’s Brennan Center for Justice, say the problems extend beyond the Bush administration. They argue that the executive branch needs a complete overhaul.

Schwarz recommends establishing an investigatory commission — similar to the Church Committee of the ’70s that looked into illegal intelligence activities — to begin the process of unraveling the bureaucracy.

Vanderbilt’s Lewis agrees. He says the first thing a new president should do is commission a study of the federal personnel system to recommend how best to keep flexibility while also maintaining control and fairness.

“I would promote more career professionals into key positions. Not enough use is being made of civil servants,” says Lewis. “The civil service was created to provide expert and continuous management of government. The increase in appointees has hurt both the cultivation of expertise and the continuity of management.”

Unfortunately, what was already an unwieldy machine before Bush took office has since been completely broken. And by many accounts, in its last months, the administration is seeking to make it worse.

Some appointees are scrambling to push through last-minute regulation changes. At the end of July, the Washington Post reported on the Labor Department’s effort to push through rules making it harder to regulate workers’ on-the-job exposure to chemicals and toxins.

Others are working their way into career positions. Known as “burrowing,” this has some legislators worried. In a recent letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, Sens. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) urged officials at the Justice Department to ensure that political appointees not improperly fill jobs intended for nonpartisan professionals.

“We don’t need ideological stowaways undermining the work of the next administration,” Schumer wrote.

Their concerns are well-founded. On July 28, the Justice Department Inspector General concluded an investigation that found agency political appointees — including former aide Monica Goodling — engaged in misconduct and broke civil service laws by hiring and firing agency personnel based on political philosophy.

Whether Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) or Barack Obama (D-Ill.) have the political will to reform the federal bureaucracy remains to be seen. For her part, University of Maryland’s Steinzor believes things can only get better.

“The history of these issues demonstrates that, at some point, the pendulum reaches a limit in its rightward swing,” she says. “I think that point passed about two years ago, and that it has already begun to swing back. How long it will take to traverse the arc is the real question.”

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• Reader Comments

  I understand that the author is an AntiBush zeleot just as the group that was “decrying Dudley as an “anti-regulation zealot.””. 

  The opposite side of this coin is that the government is too big, too intrusive, there are too many regulations, congress is out of control no matter which party is in power, and bush slowed the rate of additional regulation by a quarter. Good Job.

  Please remember that regulation has the practical effect of law without the debates, committee process, or in many cases the executive approval. Which means that petty functionaries can make the rules that destroy peoples lives.

  Finally, please remember that all Presidents appoint folks that agree with them. Those people serve at the pleasure of the President who appointed them. This isn’t unique to Bush. He is merely the most recent.

  And, speaking of unproven science that is politically motivated to be presented as fact…... ever hear of global warming?

  Posted by Phillip on Aug 19, 2008 at 1:39 AM

  In practical terms, everything in this article is blatant nonsense.

  The single most interesting piece of blatant nonsense is the accusation that President Bush is “taking broad liberties to subvert the Bill of Rights”.  But then there is nothing that tells us what the President has done or has tried to do to subvert the Bill of Rights.

  Perhaps it was the attempt at gun control?  Oh, no, wait, that is what the Demonicrats are doing.

  Maybe it is the restrictions on religious freedom?  Well, no, that is the Leftist Demonicrats, led by the ACLU.

  How about the FISA laws?  Wait, wait, wait, that can’t be right, Obama himself voted for FISA.

  The projection defense mechanism is an internal psychological mechanism that is used by a person, usually subconsciously, to defend himself from stress.  When a person is lying to himself, he uses the projection defense mechanism to convince himself that someone else is doing the lying.  The internal conflict and stress is dealt with by projecting the dishonesty onto someone else. 

  So, what is it that Moraff finds so stressful that he must make up nonsensical stories about President Bush?  Who knows?  Who cares?

  Posted by scorp on Aug 19, 2008 at 4:48 AM

  The Author Responds:

  Phillip & Scorp:

  I know that by responding I am only lending credence to your asinine ramblings, but here goes…

  A clarification.  I am not an “Anti-” anything.  I am, in fact, a registered Independent and an outspoken supporter of gun rights. So please do not try to cast your paranoid, Pinkos-around-every-corner, global leftist conspiracy – or, for that matter, your cereal-box psychology - brush over me.

  But my personal views have nothing to do with my work. I am a reporter. I report the news by speaking to people who know a lot more about these issues than you or I to get to the bottom of a particular issue.  It’s not a “projection defense mechanism,” it’s my job. And I take it seriously. 

  The point is, if Bush were doing a wonderful job with the federal bureaucracy, I assure you, you’d be reading that instead of the above.  But that’s simply not the case. For your information, David Lewis and Paul Light are the country’s foremost authorities on government bureaucracy. I invite you to verify that yourself. I think I’ll take them at their word.

  If you have a problem hearing the truth from qualified individuals, perhaps you should stop reading In These Times, and instead find some source of information that does not approach a topic with the element of critical thought essential to good journalism.  Believe me there are plenty of them out there. Or better yet, put up a blog of your own. I’m sure there are likeminded individuals, like Phillip above, who still think global warming is a hoax. They’d be happy to hear from you, I’m certain.

  Truly,
  Christopher Moraff

  Posted by cmoraff on Aug 19, 2008 at 1:20 PM

  As one who is not a Bush lover, I resent being linked to such a stupid article in even a minor way.

  Government bureaucracy has been building for decades under both parties.  Now Christopher Moraff has man aged to pin it down to Bush?

  Give me a break!

  The current Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac abortion is a prime example. The congress is supposed to be the oversight but simply “overlooks” the fraud an cronyism which is being foisted on taxpayers and sucking dry the individual investors in the name of “Too Big to Fail.”

  This, like so many other examples in this idiotic blather, is a result of our professional “public servants” shirking their responsibilities while taking care of each other first.

  A reporter who seeks the “truth” should widen his search and spare us the opinions of a couple of experts.

  This kind of amateur assessment should be left for the blog battles.

  Posted by whattheheck on Aug 19, 2008 at 4:01 PM

  Can anyone possibly believe that McSame would change Bush’s course and repair the federal government. The only time that
  McSame loves the government is when it benefits him.  End of story.  He has a dangerous ideology and is very ignorant. Can anyone visualize him reading a book?  They’d have to give him book props to carry, just like they gave Bush.  What did Bush say once: “I read the ShakespeareS.”

  Posted by Brianna on Aug 19, 2008 at 4:43 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 47 posts.

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