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Thursday, October 20, 2005

UMRA Used to Kill Minimum Wage Increase
Remember that sneak attack from Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), who snuck into the Senate budget resolution an amendment that altered the procedural requirements of the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act? UMRA created a new point of order against any bill that would impose costs on state and local governments above a specific threshold, but the vote count required to overcome the point of order and allow a bill to move forward for a final vote was only a simple majority. Alexander changed that, for the Senate at least, by raising the vote count to a 60-vote supermajority.

As we explained at the time, Alexander’s gambit means that a relatively harmless procedural mechanism turned into an insurmountable roadblock to important protections for the public interest. Take, for example, new environmental protections, which typically either rely on state and local governments as partners in enforcement activities or call on the local governments to modify their own behaviors (as polluters, as managers of water systems, sewers, and waste facilities, etc.). Also at stake would be any improvements for workers, such as a real increase in the minimum wage, if the costs to states for applying new safeguards for their own employees reach $62 million or more. In fact, since UMRA became law, one of the few statutes ultimately enacted that met the UMRA threshold was the minimum wage increase from the mid-1990s.

Now, Alexander’s UMRA sneak attack has been used to defeat — what else? — a proposed increase in the minimum wage. In a replay of an earlier battle, Sen. Kennedy offered a proposal to raise the minimum wage (S. Amdt. 2063) while Sen. Enzi offered an alternative that purported to “offset” the increase with dangerous anti-regulatory measures (S. Amdt. 2115). The Kennedy amendment was killed when Sen. Bond raised the UMRA point of order against the bill, and the 60-vote supermajority requirement kicked in. The 47-51 vote to preserve the amendment against the UMRA point of order fell short of the 60 votes needed to sustain the measure.

Fortunately, what was good for the goose proved good for the gander: Sen. Enzi’s amendment likewise failed.

Posted by Robert Shull, 05:30:57 PM

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Your Safety is at Stake
More than 5,000 people are killed every year in crashes with big rigs on the nation's highways, and a major cause of these accidents is fatigue -- that overworked truck drivers are forced to drive way too many hours at a stretch. Now Congress is poised to make matters worse.

The Bush administration put us all in peril with a change to the rules governing the number of hours that truck companies can force their drivers to work. The Bush administration's rule allowed companies to game the system and force truckers to work up to 77 hours in a seven-day period. When the rule was rejected by a federal court, the administration ran to Congress and won a temporary legislative reprieve. Instead of taking the time to devise a better rule that would keep America safe, the administration has been pushing its vision of a free-for-all for trucking companies. The White House endorsed industry's request for a Wal-Mart rule -- special rules for companies not specifically in the trucking business but which hire drivers -- when compiling its latest anti-regulatory hit list, and it used Hurricane Katrina as an excuse to waive hours of service regulations for operations related to Katrina recovery.

Now the heat is on, and Congress is responding. Public Citizen and other highway safety groups have called on Congress to resist pressure from the trucking industry to codify the administration's rules in the Transportation/Treasury appropriations bill. Click here to find out more about the issue, get the latest developments, and take action.

Posted by Robert Shull, 06:02:17 PM

Friday, October 14, 2005

Bills to Dismantle Government
Hurricane Katrina revealed more dramatically and tragically than ever before in recent memory just how much we need public institutions to protect the public and meet critical needs. There are bills pending in Congress that go in completely the wrong direction -- dismantling government rather than creating the public institutions we need.

The common themes are (1) shutting down government programs through mandatory sunsets, and (2) giving the White House the power to reorganize government with no effective oversight from Congress.

Click the links above for more information, including downloads of bill text.

Bills that mandate sunsets or call for power to shut down government programs:

S. 1399
H.R. 973
H.R. 3277
H.R. 3282

Bills that would give President Bush the power to reorganize government programs with little or no oversight:

S. 1155
S. 1399
H.R. 2470
H.R. 3276

And don't miss OMB Watch's testimony on two of those bills in the House.

Posted by Robert Shull, 06:53:45 PM

Thursday, October 13, 2005

Davis-Bacon Suspension Angers House Republicans

After Hurricane Katrina, President Bush waived wage protections established under the Davis-Bacon Act that require federal contractors to pay area prevailing wages. While some have speculated on the legality of this decision, it has flat out angered a substantial number of House members from the President's own party, who sent a letter to him in late September expressing their outrage.

This week, Rep. LaTourette (R-OH) - the member who spearheaded the effort to rally 36 other Republicans against the waiver - announced on the House floor he would be seeking legislative action to reinstate Davis-Bacon requirements. "I don't know exactly what we have in mind yet, but I think the week of the 17th [of October] there may be some activity," LaTourette said.

Democrats in the House have already taking action to attempt to reverse Bush's decision. Rep. George Miller (D-CA) has introduced a bill, H.R. 3763, that will require the re-application of Davis-Bacon wage requirements to the areas affect by Hurricane Katrina. It is widely agreed the bill would pass it voted upon, but the House GOP leadership has continued to block any such vote.

Make Your Voice Heard
The Campaign for America's Future has launched a letter writing campaign to raise support for reinstating Davis-Bacon requirements.

Posted by Adam Hughes, 02:54:11 PM

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