Are Tainted Food, Drug-Resistant Disease and Toxic Chemicals Coming?

The post Are Tainted Food, Drug-Resistant Disease and Toxic Chemicals Coming? appeared first on WhoWhatWhy.

These days, if you want to raise the hackles of public interest advocates in Washington, D.C., bring up the Regulatory Accountability Act (RAA).

The RAA, now pending before Congress, evokes a torrent of metaphors.

“If [White House Senior Adviser] Steve Bannon and [Americans for Tax Reform President] Grover Norquist ever had a love child,” the RAA would be the result, quipped Laura MacCleery in a recent blog.

MacCleery, director of regulatory affairs for the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), also termed the RAA the “regulatory equivalent of a cluster bomb on the functioning of government.”

Other progressive advocates have called the RAA “A License to Kill,” “The Worst Bill You’ve Never Heard Of,” and a “Corporate Con Job.”

In at least one agency — the Department of Transportation — rulemaking has virtually come to a halt, delaying measures that could prevent thousands of traffic deaths.

The RAA is not a new idea. Proposed in several previous Congresses, it has long earned the disdain of environmental, consumer, and public health advocates. But this year, their opposition is more intense because the prospects for the RAA becoming law have never been brighter.

The House, Senate and White House are controlled by business-friendly Republicans. A more extreme version of the proposal has already passed the House. And the Senate bill — which has two Democratic sponsors — was recently approved in committee.

Despite the fierce metaphors to describe it, the bill contains no Bannon-like calls for the “deconstruction of the administrative state,” or head-on attacks on “job-killing” regulations. On the contrary, Senate sponsors Rob Portman (R-OH) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-SD) described their proposal as a moderate compromise that would address small business concerns and help create jobs.

Helping carry out the Trump agenda are scores of corporate lobbyists hired for “task forces” at each agency. In a previous story, we called them regulatory “hit squads.”

Both Heitkamp and Portman contend that their bill is about modernizing the rulemaking process and eliminating “red tape.” Both insist that the bill will not erode environmental protection and public health and safety.

In a recent op-ed, US Chamber of Commerce senior vice president William Kovacs took the same tack, stressing that the RAA would make the rulemaking process more transparent and accountable.

Dense Language Hides a Minefield

But critics charge that behind the RAA’s dense technical language is a revolutionary proposal that could have dire consequences. The bill, they claim, would upend the work of federal agencies, making it nearly impossible for them to protect the public from toxic chemicals, unsafe consumer products, tainted food and a host of other dangers.

“Bottom line, this is not a moderate bill,” James Goodwin, senior policy analyst for the Center for Progressive Reform, told WhoWhatWhy.

The 58-page bill would require agencies to fulfill 53 new procedural requirements including mandates to:

•  Convene adversarial formal hearings for all “high-impact” rules under consideration — those that have an economic impact of $1 billion on more — if a rule opponent asks for one, increasing the power of corporate interests over rulemaking  

Read more https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/07/17/tainted-food-drug-resistant-disease-toxic-chemicals-coming/