Representative Darrell Issa, the incoming chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has made his views on regulations fairly clear. Earlier this week, for example, he scored headlines when his office gave out a document publicizing the issues his committee will take up. From the document: "The committee will examine how overregulation has hurt job creation..."
No surprise; that's about the line we'd expect from Issa.
But someone in Issa's office must have recognized a problem: Won't the investigations not quite have the same credibility or punch if the investigator himself has already announced his conclusion?
Perhaps that’s why Rep. Issa's spokesman, Kurt Bardella, took a different tack this same week, telling Politico: "Is there a pattern emerging? Is there a consistent practice or regulation that hurts jobs? Until you have all the facts, you really can't make a lot of determinations and judgments."
Note the use of question marks instead of conclusions. Quite a step back. But he better tell his boss, who’s already on the record with his determinations and judgments.
The truth is that Representative Issa seems to be stumbling out of the gate in his new role. He’s already getting skewered for his blustering and assertion that President Obama is “one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times.” When pressed, he walked it back a bit, still without foundation, saying the President led, “one of the most corrupt administrations.”
Clearly Representative Issa is going to get some experience walking backwards.
And when it comes to regulatory matters, he’s going to have to actually demonstrate that the regulatory safeguards for health, safety and the environment that he dislikes, so many of which explicitly passed the cost-benefit standard that his party has championed for years, and all of which are pursuant to laws duly enacted by Congress, aren’t worth it after all. And he'll need to do all of that in the year after the BP Oil Spill, a big salmonella outbreak, and the West Virginia mine disaster.
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Ben Somberg | January 5, 2011
Representative Darrell Issa, the incoming chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has made his views on regulations fairly clear. Earlier this week, for example, he scored headlines when his office gave out a document publicizing the issues his committee will take up. From the document: “The committee will examine how overregulation has […]
Daniel Farber | January 4, 2011
Cross-posted from Legal Planet. Although there will be many flashing lights and loud noises, 2011 will primarily be a year in which various events that are already in play evolve toward major developments in 2012. Litigation. The one exceptional major development in 2011 will be American Electric Power (AEP) v. Connecticut, the climate nuisance case […]
Yee Huang | December 30, 2010
a(broad) perspective In 2010, natural (and unnatural) environmental disasters around the world killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced millions more, and caused significant air and water pollution as well as human health catastrophes. Insurance giant Swiss Re estimated that these disasters caused an estimated $222 billion in losses. Disasters are overwhelming to begin with, but for […]
Yee Huang | December 29, 2010
Today EPA released the final Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL), which is a cap or limit on the total amount of nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment that can enter the Bay from the District of Columbia and the six Bay Watershed states: Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia. The Bay TMDL culminates […]
Yee Huang | December 28, 2010
The 111th Congress saw two attempts to provide legislative impetus to restore the Chesapeake Bay. Now that the lame duck session has ended, the results are in: The Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Protection Act, S. 1816. Introduced in October 2009 by Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), the bill would have reiterated EPA’s authority to establish […]
Yee Huang | December 28, 2010
Tomorrow, the Environmental Protection Agency will issue its final Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for the Chesapeake Bay, setting a pollution cap for the Bay that is comprised of 92 individual caps for each of the tributary segments that flow into the Bay. The Bay TMDL represents another important milestone in the long-running effort to […]
Alice Kaswan | December 24, 2010
The environment received an early Christmas present from the Environmental Protection Agency yesterday, with EPA’s announcement that it would propose New Source Performance Standards (NSPSs) for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from power plants and refineries in 2011, and then finalize the regulations in 2012. The decision resolves a lawsuit brought by states, local governments, and […]
Ben Somberg | December 23, 2010
Two years ago this week, an earthen wall holding back a giant coal ash impoundment failed in Kingston, Tennessee, sending more than a billion gallons of coal ash slurry over nearby land and into the Emory River. The ash had chemicals including arsenic, lead, and mercury. Clean up costs could be as much as $1.2 […]
Rena Steinzor | December 23, 2010
Salmonella in eggs, peanuts, tomatoes, and spinach; and melamine in pet food and candy imported from China… With a regularity that has become downright terrifying, the food safety system in the United States has given us ample evidence that it has broken down completely. And so, in a small miracle of legislative activism, Democrats in Congress finally […]