AUSTIN, Texas -- In the Most Chilling Quote category, consider
this gem from Mitchell Daniels, director of the office of Management and
Budget, concerning the administration's ongoing campaign to deregulate
everything in sight: "We must learn to speak the vocabulary of consumer
protection."
Oooo, Grandma, what big teeth you have! The Wall Street Journal
did an admiring profile this week of the "regulatory czar," John D. Graham,
who works for Mitchell. Graham, you may recall, was the subject of a peppy
confirmation fight on account of he founded Harvard's Center for Risk
Analysis. The center is heavily funded by business and industry groups and
by individual businesses. You will be amazed to learn that the center often
criticizes regulations disliked by the very people who give it money! Graham
once claimed that government regulations kill 60,000 Americans a year, a
figure that turned out to be ... evanescent.
Graham said in a recent speech: "There is no grandiose plot to
roll back safeguards. This administration is pursuing an agenda of smarter
regulation." Ah, smarter regulation; well, that's different. The Journal
appends a handy graph showing that on Czar Graham's watch, the Bush
administration has rejected rules at the highest rate since President
Reagan's first term.
Less than two weeks after Sept. 11, The Washington Post reported
on an e-mail written by a lobbyist and circulated at Graham's request.
Graham had asked her "to convene key lobbyists to identify and rank" the
regulations business most wanted to target. Among the 57 listed were parts
of the Family and Medical Leave Act, food-labeling requirements, reporting
toxic emissions and mine-ventilation standards. That may sound to some like
a grandiose plot, but here's the genius part of smart deregulation: Instead
of doing this secretly (well, OK, the memo wasn't supposed to become
public), the OMB now puts all the info about who meets with Graham right up
on its website,
www.whitehouse.gov/omb/inforeg/regpol.html. The site offers
a log of his meetings, letters he sends to agencies and general guidance he
issues on rulemaking, says the WSJ.
As Izzy Stone used to say, "Who needs a conspiracy when what
they're doing to you is right on the front page?"
OMB Watch, a public interest group, took a close look at
Graham's performance on the problem of underinflated tires: The National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates hundreds of people die each
year as a result of underinflated tires.
After the big flap over bad tires on SUVs, Congress told the
highway safety people to fix the problem. The safety people were fixing to
require a pressure sensor in each tire with a dashboard warning to tell the
driver when one was dangerously low. But no new rules can be put in place
without the OK from the rules czar, and Graham told the safety people to go
back to the drawing board.
In rejecting the safety folks' plan, Graham argued that they
should instead allow a cheaper "indirect system" favored by automobile
manufacturers, which works with anti-lock brakes. Graham fully acknowledges
that the "direct" system works better, but he claims the cheaper, less
effective alternative would serve as incentive for manufacturers to install
anti-lock brakes, and the brakes would save more lives than the tire
pressure gizmo.
Now this might make sense if anti-lock brakes saved lives. But
Graham cites a study whose own author contends it does not show that
anti-lock brakes would save lives.
"This is hardly the first time Graham has implausibly
interpreted evidence to fit his preconceived point of view against
regulation," says the OMB Watch report. In 2000, while serving on the EPA's
Science Advisory Board, he claimed studies showed low levels of dioxin can
actually protect against cancer, that it is an "anti-carcinogen."
I always wonder if people like that would feed dioxin to their
own children. According to the EPA, dioxin -- even at low levels -- is
linked to cancer, infertility, immune system damage and learning
disabilities. The Bush administration is dragging its feet on regulating the
chemical.
Gary Bass, chair of Citizens for Sensible Safeguards, says
Graham is "a nice guy doing enormous damage. He deserves credit for more
transparency at OMB so we can see how he's gutting safety, health and
environmental protections. He cloaks his actions under the guise of science,
but it's mostly pseudo-science."
The OMB Watch report concludes: "By invoking anti-lock brakes,
Graham gives the appearance of being chiefly driven by safety concerns --
although it should be remembered, this concern is expressed in the context
of rejecting a safety standard. This is reminiscent of Graham's opposition
to EPA's 1997 regulation to prevent against smog, which he argued would
actually increase the rate of skin cancer. As with the tire pressure
monitoring case, Graham did not attack the standard directly, as an industry
lobbyist would, nor did he focus on costs alone. Instead, he cast himself as
an advocate for greater public health while opposing the regulation.
Ironically, when Graham expresses concern over health or safety, this is
usually bad news.
"In playing this role, Graham frequently pits one possible
health or safety measure against another, forcing an unnecessary trade-off
to justify inaction, which has long been his hallmark."
I'd say Graham uses the vocabulary of consumer protection quite
fluently.
To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other
Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web
page at
www.creators.com.
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