May 2001 - VOLUME 22 - NUMBER 5
T H E B U S H Y E A R S B E G I N
Rollback
A Corporate Feeding Frenzy
During Bushs Honeymoon
It has been a busy first hundred days for the Bush administration. Among the new administrations first acts was an across-the-board
order by Bushs chief of staff and ex-automobile industry lobbyist
Andrew Card to suspended a raft of new regulations adopted at the end
of the Clinton administration, including important rules to protect the
environment and workers. In the ensuing three months, the administration managed to offend a wide
array of constituents, including those concerned about: Additionally, Bushs cabinet draws heavily on the corporate sector,
as our cabinet profiles illustrate. The administrations subcabinet
appointments, which have been very slow in coming, are likely to be at
least as corporate in orientation, and perhaps more so. Many or most of the suspended or rescinded regulations were issued at
the very last minute by an outgoing Clinton-administration. Some speculate
the Clinton administration issued many of the new rules as a trap for
the Bush administration daring the incoming administration to repeal
them and might not have been so quick to put them in place had
Gore been elected and a Democratic administration been in office to answer
to corporate lobbyists demands. Whatever the merits of this speculation,
it is certainly the case that the last-minute adoption of the rules made
them vulnerable to rapid repeal. The public had not come to rely on the
rules, and business had not adjusted to their requirements. If these rules
had been in effect for several years, it would have been much harder for
the Bush administration to act to undo them. Still, none of this should obscure the point that it was in fact the Bush administration which has so aggressively carried forward the corporate agenda in such a short period. Given how stacked the new administration is with corporate-tied officials, there is every reason to expect the corporate feeding frenzy to continue throughout Bushs term. |