Regulatory Rollbacks

Regulatory Rollbacks

August 16, 2004

As new investigations by both the Washington Post and New York Times reveal, the Bush administration has been using regulatory rollbacks to further a big business agenda at the expense of public health and safety.  Recent rollbacks have covered a wide variety of issues, including logging in national forests, patients' rights, packaged meats and grants to religious charities. 

• The Bush administration's deregulatory record is radically different from that of previous administrations. When President Bush took office, his cabinet officials moved quickly to adopt anti-regulatory measures. Over the last three and a half years, for example, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has eliminated nearly five times as many regulations as it has completed and has not initiated any sort of major new health or safety rule. Unlike his two predecessors, Bush has canceled more unfinished regulatory work than he has completed.
  
  
• The Bush administration is giving corporations a hand in blocking protections for workers and the environment. Under President Bush, businesses are using the Data Quality Act to challenge scientific data that highlights risks to workers or consumers. Sugar companies, logging groups and the American Chemistry Council have all recently used it to challenge regulations that affect their interests. The Post reports that under Bush's Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Act has "become a potent tool for companies to beat back regulation."
  
  
• Deregulatory efforts are spread among all industries and are affecting public health and safety. Last week, the New York Times documented how the administration is trying to rewrite coal regulations in favor of companies, rescinding "more than a half-dozen proposals intended to make coal miners' jobs safer." The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) successfully pushed through a regulation that would forbid the release of some data relating to unsafe motor vehicles, saying that publicizing the information would cause "substantial competitive harm" to manufacturers.

For more information on the administration's regulatory rollbacks, see the recent Center for American Progress and OMB Watch report, "Special Interest Takeover."

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