vemakiv01: Evan Bayh working with Chamber of Commerce to weaken regulation

Sunday 26 June 2011

Evan Bayh working with Chamber of Commerce to weaken regulation

Evan Bayh (Official portrait)

Former Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh has joined forces with former Bush chief of staff Andy Card and the Chamber of Commerce to lobby against what they'd like us to think of as "excessive government regulation," but we might call "regulations that keep companies from killing us." But with that line-up, there's little chance of a reasonable portrayal of reality.

Bayh, Card, and the Chamber are pushing the REINS Act, which Ezra Klein describes as:

really a very clever little bill: It would destroy the government's capacity to pass major regulations, but it sounds like it'd merely involve Congress more fully in the process. As such, I expect it to hang around on the wish list of things Republicans will try and pass next time they do have the votes.

Bayh and Card, of course, would have us believe that safety and environmental and other regulations will devastate the economy and cost bajillions of jobs. But Think Progress guest poster Sidney Shapiro writes that:

Employers themselves consistently attribute ?unextended mass layoffs? to causes other than regulation; Department of Labor statistics analyzed by the Economic Policy Institute show that from 2007 to 2009, only .3 percent of such layoffs were pinned to rules. Extreme weather events actually accounted for more layoffs. And it?s important to remember that our current economic situation comes thanks largely to under-regulation of financial institutions.

But leave it to Evan Bayh to ignore the facts if the Chamber of Commerce asks him to.