President George W. Bush is about to leave office with historically low approval ratings, and after voters resoundingly rejected his legacy by defeating his party’s presidential candidate and further shrinking his party’s minorities in both the Senate and the House.
But Bush is spending the waning days of his presidency getting revenge on the working people of the U.S. He is shoving through some nasty eleventh-hour executive orders and federal regulations, some of which will be procedurally difficult for Barack Obama to overturn. These last-minute imperial decrees will increase pollution, make workplaces less safe, force the poor to pay more out-of-pocket for healthcare, and take away union bargaining rights from many federal workers.
On December 1, Bush issued an executive order that took away the bargaining rights of some 8,600 federal workers. These include employees of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF); Energy Department; Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Federal Air Marshal Service; Coast Guard; Federal Aviation Administration; and Federal Emergency Management Agency. Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, says these workers, “just had their collective bargaining rights stripped away from them for no justification.”
As he did a few years ago when he deprived airport screeners and other employees of the Department of Homeland Security of their rights to collective bargaining, Bush cited “national security” as the excuse for depriving these federal employees of a basic human right.
ATTACKING SAFETY AND HEALTH
The Bush Labor Department is rushing to finalize a new rule that would make it more difficult in the future for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Mine Safety and Health Agency (MSHA) to regulate toxic substances in the workplace. Margaret Seminario, occupational safety director of the AFL-CIO, said the Bush administration “is rushing to lock in place requirements that would make it more difficult for the next administration to protect workers.” Under current procedures, she says, it often takes eight years or more to adopt a new rule regulating a hazardous substance; the new Bush proposal would add another two years to that process.
A spokesman for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says the business group “unequivocally supports” the new Bush roadblock to safety regulations, while Rep. George Miller (D-CA), chair of the House Education and Labor Committee, says it would “weaken future workplace safety regulations.”
Medicaid is the federal program, administered by the states, that provides minimal health coverage to some – but by no means all – of the poorest Americans. A new federal regulation published November 25 will allow states to charge Medicare patients premiums and higher co-pays for doctors’ services, hospital care and prescription drugs, and to deny care to those who don’t pay. Public health experts and even some federal officials said it would force many low-income people to go without needed care. David Sloan, senior vice president of AARP, said, “Denying necessary care to people who are unable to pay is unconscionable.”
Those aren’t the only late fouls from Team Bush before the final whistle forces them to leave the playing field. In other last-minute regulatory changes the administration intends to allow more power plants to be built near national parks and wilderness areas; permit coal companies to dump rock and dirt from “mountaintop removal” mining operations in nearby streams and valleys; and weaken protection of endangered species.
These last-minute regulations violate an earlier promise by the Bush administration. In May the White House chief of staff, Joshua Bolten, issued a memo in which he said, “Except in extraordinary circumstances, regulations to be finalized in this administration should be proposed no later than June 1, 2008, and the final regulations should be issued no later than Nov. 1, 2008.” The changes being enacted since the election fall well past that deadline.