About Michell McIntyre

Posts by Michell McIntyre:

tgiving

Showcasing the Best of America and Defending Our National Government Programs

Thanksgiving is the official day to be grateful – to count one’s blessings from the year and reflect on how to make things better for the next one. Regrettably, this year Congress has given us little to be thankful for with the ongoing battles for health care, attempts to give tax handouts for the wealthy, and inserting dangerous poison pill riders into budget bills, intending to strip important protections from working Americans.

But, the programs that safeguard our lives are another story all together. Showcasing of the best of America, our national government programs show our American values at work: we believe that people should not be left to starve and that communities devastated by disasters – both natural and manmade – should not be left to fend for themselves. We believe that everyone should have access to affordable education and healthcare. We are thankful for the government agencies that work to right these wrongs, and we believe we must fight to protect them and the values they exemplify.

Unfortunately, corporate lobbyists, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other special interests are attempting to hamstring essential government programs and protections that serve millions of American children, adults and seniors. These powerful pro-corporate voices are working to convince some members of Congress to include both funding cuts to fundamental programs and an avalanche of treacherous poison pill riders in the federal budget. These funding cuts and poison pill riders attack some of the government protections at the very heart of our society.

Health Care

Throughout the budget and appropriations season, we have witnessed countless attacks on Medicare and Medicaid funding, the attempted rollback of women’s health care and Congress letting the Children Health Insurance Program (CHIP) expire, a program that allows 9 million kids to get health insurance. The Senate’s version of the tax plan includes a provision that would overturn a key provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which would lead to 13 million more Americans being uninsured.

Nutrition

Programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the National School Lunch Program and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) safeguard against Americans starving in the streets and children going to sleep with empty bellies. Funding for these essential programs is threated by the draconian budget proposal and tax cuts for the wealthy that Republicans in Congress have proposed.

Employment and Worker Rights

The Trump budget proposal and Republicans’ attacks on health care include cuts to Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). SSDI is designed primarily to protect workers who become injured or disabled, and it currently serves nearly 9 million American workers. In addition, worker health and safety is being undermined by Republican attacks on the silica rule. Silica dust causes renal disease, silicosis, lung cancer and other terrible illnesses in workers exposed to it. Poison pill riders in the budget bills also include various provisions that would prevent the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from enforcing basic labor law protections.

Education

The Trump and Republican budget proposals and riders have targeted public education – both K-12 and higher education. Policy changes and funds have been proposed to strip public schools of much needed dollars and instead fund voucher schemes that leave public schools in the dust. Additional funding cuts would slash millions from career and technical education, adult basic literacy instruction, and child care for low-income parents attending college. One of the many poison pill riders being considered would prohibit the U.S. Department of Education from enforcing the Gainful Employment rule, which would save students and taxpayers millions of dollars in student loans from predatory for-profit ‘schools.’

Disaster Relief

When disasters strike, we must help communities get back on track. And there has been no shortage of disasters this year. Destruction from the wildfires in the Pacific Northwest and California, and the three major hurricanes in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands all need sufficient disaster relief funding – but they may not get it. In addition to underfunding disaster relief, the White House is looking to offset the relief with cuts to domestic programs, while at the same time pushing for tax giveaways to the extremely wealthy.

This Thanksgiving, we should all be thankful that We the People came together to stop the one-sided healthcare legislation that would have taken away hard won health benefits from the ACA, also known as Obamacare. Unfortunately our work is not done, with the Senate attempting to use tax legislation to pass a sneaky repeal of Obamacare.

American traditions aren’t just about turkey and stuffing, they’re about protecting families, consumers, and workers. So, this Thanksgiving we hope you’re also grateful for the services and safeguards that keep our communities whole – and that you’re ready to fight to defend them!

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Escaping the Zombie Riders

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It’s Halloween and the ghouls and ghosts are out raising hell. However, some flying monkeys from a variety of villains resurfaced earlier this year and have been wreaking havoc for months and will continue to do so if something isn’t done.

When it comes to the budget deal, poison pill riders are the flying monkeys of the political world; out to do the bidding of big business, the Chamber of Commerce and other special interests. Ideological riders are provisions that address extraneous and unpopular policy issues and are often slipped into unrelated must-pass bills – including this year’s appropriations package – as a way to strong arm approval for treacherous ideas that result in a dangerous strategy for the American public.

Time and time again, the American people support policies to restrain Wall Street abuses and to provide access to justice, to prevent consumer rip-offs and corporate wrongdoing, to protect our health and environment, and to defend and improve our campaign finance and election systems; yet zombie riders keep coming back from the dead. They’re almost impossible to kill and conservative legislators do everything they can to keep them alive.

For examples of these zombie riders that benefit  big business look to the provision that would prevent the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from finalizing popular new rules to require public corporations to disclose their political spending to shareholders, or to the rider that would make it harder for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to do its job by attempting to ‘restructure’ it. The CFPB is the only agency focused exclusively on protecting consumers’ financial interests. In this age of corporate wrongdoing, when companies like Wells Fargo and Equifax are putting consumers in harm’s way, consumers need the CFPB to fight for them and the public’s interest.

Unfortunately, the longer the riders are left unchecked, the more they seem to multiply. Most of this current crop of undead riders came out of the haunted House of Representatives while others are held over from previous Appropriation cycles making them harder to kill than vampires.

Vampire riders seek to suck the life blood out of working families by halting the enforcement of the Department of Labor’s final fiduciary rule, which would ensure that financial advisors work in their clients’ best interests instead of lining their pockets. Vampire riders also seek to drain the life out of protected wildlife like the riders that seek to strip protections for animals currently under the Endangered Species Act, undermining the scientific basis of those decisions.

We need our own Buffy the Vampire Slayer to battle against these zombie and vampires riders, but we also need you. In the coming months, the Senate needs to stand up against these henchmen of big business, the Chamber and other special interests and put the well being of all Americans first, and they need to hear from their voters that they want a clean budget without these add-ons. Because if not, the big orange pumpkin the in the White House will sign these zombie and vampire riders into law.

Whack-a-Mole Day 5 – A Brief Presidency

Each day this week we’ll be highlighting some of the anti-regulatory bills that Public Citizen and our allies have been pushing back against this fall.

Midnight Rules Relief Act or the “Three-Year Presidency” Act

Photo courtesy Johan Jonk Stenström/Flickr/CC BY-NC 2.0
Photo courtesy Johan Jonk Stenström/Flickr/CC BY-NC 2.0

Congressional conservatives already have a mechanism for denoting their disapproval of new public protections finalized during the fourth year of an administration. In an effort to further strengthen their power to curtail or weaken these lifesaving standards, congressional conservatives introduced the Midnight Rules Relief Act (H.R. 5982). The bill would amend the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to allow a blanket disapproval of all regulations finalized near the end of presidential terms.

H.R. 5982 is based on a fatally flawed premise – namely, that regulations which are proposed or finalized during the so-called “midnight” rulemaking period are rushed and inadequately vetted. In fact, the very opposite is true. There are currently dozens of public health and safety regulations that have been in the regulatory process for years or decades, including many that date from the Obama administration’s first term. Some even predate the current administration.

H.R. 5982 would empower Congress to use the CRA – a process that is rushed, nontransparent and discourages informed decision-making – to block, at the 11th hour, rules that have completed the journey through the onerous rulemaking process. Members of Congress do not have to articulate a valid policy rationale – or any reason at all – in support of CRA resolutions of disapproval. Resolutions of disapproval not only nullify the regulation in question, but also prohibit a federal agency from issuing any other regulation that is “substantially the same” in the future, unless specifically authorized to do so by a future act of Congress. Accordingly, broad disapproval resolutions would wipe out huge swathes of agencies’ authority to address pressing public threats, potentially forever.

H.R. 5982 was shelved when lawmakers left at the end of September, but is set to reappear in the post-election congressional work term often called a lame duck session. Then, expect to see it move rapidly through the House floor process, be voted on and shuttled to the Senate.

Unfortunately, the whack-a-mole game is not over. The above bills are only a small taste of some of the legislation still to come. Right as Congress was departing for a six week recess, U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions (TX-32) introduced a nefarious bill attacking federal agency guidance documents like the U.S. Department of Education’s campus sexual assault guidance and equality guidance. In the next Congress, conservatives will be fully armed with new, sneakily-named but destructive and pernicious anti-regulatory bills, and it’s our job to stop them.

To learn more about joining the fight to stop legislation that attacks public protections, please visit the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards website at SensibleSafeguards.org. The only way to win whack-a-mole is with more hammers!

Whack-a-Mole Day 4: Endless Lawsuits

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Each day this week we’ll be highlighting some of the anti-regulatory bills that Public Citizen and our allies have been pushing back against this fall.

REVIEW Act or the “Endless Corporate Lawsuits” Act

Photo courtesy Eric Parker/Flickr/CC BY-NC 2.0
Photo courtesy Eric Parker/Flickr/CC BY-NC 2.0

Industry has a long history of running to the courts to block or delay public protections that would cut into their massive profits. As a gift to their industry donors, House conservatives crafted the Require Evaluation before Implementing Executive Wishlists Act or the REVIEW Act (H.R. 3438).

The REVIEW Act would make our system of regulatory safeguards weaker by requiring courts to review “high-impact” regulations to automatically “stay,” or block the enforcement of such protections, until all litigation is resolved– a process that takes many years to complete.

If passed, it would add several years of delay to an already unreasonably slow rulemaking process, invite more rather than less litigation, and rob the American people of many critical science-based public protections, especially those that ensure clean air and water, safe food and consumer products, safe workplaces, and a stable, prosperous economy.

H.R. 3438 would reverse one of the most fundamental and settled legal principles in our regulatory system. Under current law, courts are allowed to use their discretion to determine if it is appropriate to issue an injunction blocking the enforcement of a regulation while it is being challenged in court.

Whack-a-Mole Day 3 – Don’t Tell the Public

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Each day this week we’ll be highlighting some of the anti-regulatory bills that Public Citizen and our allies have been pushing back against this fall.

Regulatory Integrity Act (H.R. 5226) – passed on Sept. 14, 2016

Photo courtesy Julia Rubinic/Flickr/CC BY 2.0

The so-called Regulatory Integrity Act (H.R. 5226) should have been named the “Don’t Tell the Public Act.” After the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) used social media to inform the public about its impending protective rule for clean water and invited the public to submit comments on the rule, conservatives wanted to stop federal agencies from harnessing the power of social media.

H.R. 5226 aims to significantly undermine federal agencies’ ability to engage and inform the public in a meaningful and transparent way regarding its work on important science-based rulemakings that will greatly benefit the public. The bill would strictly prohibit agencies from issuing “public communications” that “emphasize the importance” of a particular agency action unless the communication has the “clear purpose of informing the public of the substance or status” of the particular action. It applies to a wide swath of regulatory actions including rulemakings, guidance documents, policy statements, directives and adjudications.

H.R. 5226 would severely impede, rather than enable, agency use of new communication technologies, most notably social media platforms, to reach and inform the public on lifesaving protections.

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