Bush busy behind the scenes

By Libby

While the nation worries, watching their investments melt away and their fellow citizens meltdown into pockets of partisan rage, Bush has been making the most of his remaining 96 days to quietly complete the total destruction of corporate oversight. Steve Benen has the story.

Corporate America has been calling for some mechanism to "preempt" product-liability litigation for years, and Bush had promised to deliver. The White House, however, had limited options in dealing with a Democratic Congress which cares about consumer protections.

So, the Bush gang is adding provisions to obscure federal regulations that will block product safety lawsuits by consumers and states. The scheme would affect products ranging from cars to prescription medication to railroad cars.

And don't be lulled into thinking there's a easy fix with a new administration taking power.

These new rules can't quickly be undone by order of the next president. Federal rules usually must go through lengthy review processes before they are changed. Rulemaking at the Food and Drug Administration, where most of the new pre-emption rules have appeared, can take a year or more.

And that's not all. Bush is also busy cementing unitary executive privilege with yet more signing statements.

In the authorization bill, Mr. Bush challenged four sections. One forbid the money from being used “to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq”; another required negotiations for an agreement by which Iraq would share some of the costs of the American military operations there.

The sections “purport to impose requirements that could inhibit the president’s ability to carry out his constitutional obligations,” including as commander in chief, Mr. Bush wrote.

In the other bill, he raised concerns about two sections that strengthen legal protections against political interference with the internal watchdog officials at each executive agency. One section gives the inspectors general a right to counsels who report directly to them. But Mr. Bush wrote in his signing statement that such lawyers would be bound to follow the legal interpretations of the politically appointed counsels at each agency.

The other section requires the White House to tell Congress what each inspector general said about the administration’s budget proposal for their offices. Such a requirement, Mr. Bush wrote, would infringe on “the president’s constitutional authority” to decide what to recommend to Congress.

He may only have a little over three months left in office, but clearly he can still do a great deal of damage in that short span of time. I think it could take generations to undo it all. The Democrats may find they will rue not impeaching him in 06 when they had the clear mandate to do so. As the full scope of the Bush regime's misdeeds are exposed over the coming years, the public's anger will yet turn on them for their failure to follow through.

On the bright side, this may finally be the way we get rid of Reid, Pelosi and the rest of the entrenched and corrupted old guard and replace them with better Democrats. One can hope anyway.