Editor's note: This post is being regularly updated to reflect REINS Act-related developments in the Senate. Please check back often for the latest news, which you can find at the bottom of the post.

There are rumblings that as soon as today, the Senate GOP may begin to offer up the Regulations from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act (S. 299) as an amendment to, or a substitute for, bills moving to the Senate floor for a vote. Such a move would limit the public's ability to have a say on this damaging legislation.

The REINS Act, sponsored by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), would force all new, major health, safety, and environmental protections through a congressional approval process. Under the bill, if rules are not approved by both houses of Congress within 70 legislative days, those rules would be "tabled," which would essentially kill them. Such political interference with science and expert analysis is indefensible, and given the political chasm and gridlock in Congress, the REINS Act would make it impossible for agencies to carry out the mandate they have been given to safeguard Americans' air, water, food supply, and workplaces.

OMB Watch opposes the REINS Act and hopes that a majority of the Senate rejects any move to sneak such an extreme bill into other legislation.

UPDATE (11/03/2011): This afternoon (Thursday), Senate Republicans are expected to move forward with a so-called "side-by-side" alternative to the Democrats' transportation and infrastructure jobs bill (S. 1769). The Republican proposal, called the Long-Term Surface Transportation Extension Act of 2011 (S. 1786), is sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and includes several extreme proposals, including the REINS Act, a moratorium on standards that would protect the public from harm, and a rollback of air toxics rules for boilers and cement plants. The strategy here is clear: squelch full, democratic debate on damaging measures while gutting popular, protective laws and hoping that no one is paying attention. If the Hatch bill is successful, the rulemaking process would be stopped dead in its tracks, agencies would be unable to safeguard the American people from a variety of significant hazards, and the nation would be no closer to solving the jobs problem it currently faces.

UPDATE (11/03/2011): Shortly before 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, the Senate rejected a motion to proceed with S. 1786. The White House also issued a strongly worded Statement of Administration Policy on the bill, indicating that the president's senior advisors would have recommended a veto had the bill passed both houses of Congress.

UPDATE (11/08/2011): The Senate is indicating that it will once again take up the REINS Act, along with a host of other anti-regulatory attack legislation, as part of the so-called Jobs Through Growth Act (S. 1720), sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). In addition to REINS, the bill contains a public protections moratorium, legislation targeting a "phantom" U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rule on coarse particulate matter that the agency has repeatedly said it would not issue, and many more provisions that would do nothing to solve the country's jobs crisis but would go far in making it impossible to protect the American people from harm. Like S. 1786, the McCain bill is an attempt to thwart democratic discourse by sneaking bills like the REINS Act through the back door with a minimum of public debate.

UPDATE (11/10/2011): This afternoon, the Senate soundly rejected S. 1720 in a 56-40 vote. Members from both sides of the aisle joined together to oppose this damaging bill.

Today, the Governor’s Independent Investigation Panel submitted to the governor of West Virginia its report on the Upper Big Branch (UBB) mine disaster that killed 29 men in April 2010. Liz Borkowski at The Pump Handle blog has a detailed summary. Be sure to read it, especially if you’re going to bypass the 126-page report.

From a regulatory perspective, the bottom-line is this: Massey Energy, the owner of UBB, was a scofflaw – a repeat violator of critical safety standards; but for a variety of reasons, some explicable and some inexplicable, nothing was done to halt the company’s chronically dangerous practices at the Upper Big Branch mine. At a more visceral level, the transgressions and events leading up to and surrounding the disaster are a blow to human dignity.

MSHA clearly could have done more, according to the governor’s report: “Despite MSHA’s considerable authority and resources, its collective knowledge and experience, the disaster at the Upper Big Branch mine is proof positive that the agency failed its duty as the watchdog for coal miners.” In the year leading up to the disaster, the UBB mine was sending all the signs that it was about to be a big problem:

Inspectors spent 1,854 hours at the mine in 2009, nearly twice the time as in 2007. During 2009, they wrote 515 citations and orders for safety violations, including 48 withdrawal orders for repeated significant and substantial (S&S) violations. The monetary penalties proposed for violations in 2009 and early 2010 totaled nearly $1.1 million. 

But MSHA didn’t exercise elements of its regulatory authority. The agency’s inability to place UBB, or any mine, on its pattern of violations list has been well documented. The governor’s report also points out that MSHA chose not to use its power to declare “flagrant” violations at UBB, which come with a $220,000 fine.

The agency also failed “to see the entire picture” and “to connect the dots of the many potentially catastrophic failures taking place at the mine,” the report says. As a result, MSHA lost sight of its most important goal: prevention. “Enforcement aimed at prevention is what Congress envisioned for MSHA when it passed the federal Mine Law,” the report reminds us.

Of course, Massey wasn’t making it easy. The company has years of experience gaming the system. It routinely appeals violations and generally gives MSHA the legal runaround. The governor’s report relays this tale: “Massey’s Vice President for Safety Elizabeth Chamberlin reportedly took a violation written by an inspector, looked at her people and said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll litigate it away.’ ”

I feel obligated to highlight one other element of the report, summarized by Borkowski:

Autopsies on 24 of the victims, ranging in age from 25 to 61, found that 17 of them (71%) had coal workers' pneumoconiosis, or black lung disease. Five of them had less than 10 years of coal mining experience. The current limits on coal mine dust, put in place in 1973, were intended to be sufficient to prevent CWP, but have apparently not succeeded in eliminating this irreversible respiratory disease. 

Even if the explosion at UBB hadn’t occurred, holes in the regulatory safety net were going to jeopardize these men’s lives anyway. This is no way to treat humankind.

Rep. Darrell Issa, chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is using the one-year anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster as an opportunity to criticize the Obama administration for exercising more caution when issuing offshore drilling permits. After the spill, “the Administration’s subsequent assault on off-shore drilling has [damaged] economically vulnerable communities,” Issa says.

Issa’s sympathy would be touching if it weren’t so obviously contrived. (Issa’s committee has held at least 40 hearings this year, none on the spill.) If Issa were so concerned with the economic well-being of the Gulf region, he would be interested in preventing future spills. As a new report from the Economic Policy Institute shows, lax regulation in the drilling arena led to the oil spill, which continues to wreak havoc on Gulf businesses.

Issa said yesterday, “The legacy of this spill should be an increased emphasis on safety, not a full-scale retreat from off-shore energy production.” Of course, Issa has no real interest in an “increased emphasis on safety.” In fact, Issa’s role in the Republican attack on regulation is undermining the future safety of drilling.

For example, in December, when Issa wrote to businesses and industry lobbyists asking them for a hit list of regulations they want to see undone, one of the companies in his address book was ConocoPhillips. The energy giant wrote back to Issa to complain about new safety standards for offshore drilling (meant to protect both the environment and workers) set in the wake of the BP spill.

The Interior Department announced yesterday that it would be pursuing even more safety standards for oil rigs. During the announcement, Interior official Michael Bromwich also dispensed with the notion that the administration’s moratorium on Gulf drilling is somehow responsible for severe economic distress. From BNA news (subscription):

Deepwater drilling was banned by the Obama administration immediately after the BP oil spill. The moratorium was lifted in October, but Interior did not grant the first deepwater permit until Feb. 28. Since then, 11 other deepwater permits have been issued.

The agency has issued 49 drilling permits for new wells in shallow water since last summer, Bromwich said. While the pace is slightly below historical levels, there is no big backlog of pending permit applications for shallow-water drilling, as some critics have suggested, he added. 

If anything, Bromwich’s comments indicate that the Obama administration continues to play fast and loose with drilling safety. Interior has issued 12 deepwater permits even though – as evidenced by the announcement that more safety regulations are needed and under development – the administration is not fully confident that existing safeguards are sufficient to prevent another catastrophe.

The lesson may be that, one-year after the worst oil spill in U.S. history, neither Issa and his congressional colleagues nor the Obama administration are in the right place on deepwater drilling. Those who fail to learn from history…

The Department of Labor announced March 16 that it will accept public comments on its plan to review existing regulations and their impact. Labor, like all agencies, is conducting the review in accordance with an executive order President Obama signed Jan. 18.

“The Department also requests that submitters provide, in as much detail as possible, an explanation of why a regulation or reporting requirement should be modified, streamlined, expanded, or repealed, as well as specific suggestions of ways the Department can better achieve its regulatory objectives.”

The window for public input is quite small: the comment period closes March 31, only 15 days after the Labor Department opened it, and only nine days from now. The Department is hosting the public discussion using an interactive, blog-like interface at dolregs.ideascale.com.

The brevity may be a symptom of the time frame Obama gave agencies to work within when he issued his executive order. Obama gave agencies 120 days to develop a review plan, which they then must submit to the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The 120-day deadline is coming up on May 18.

(Critics of Obama’s order and accompanying Wall Street Journal editorial, including OMB Watch, fear that the regulatory review is being conducted in response to congressional and lobbyist complaints about regulation, and that the review will be used to generate a hit list of regulations industry wants to undo.)

Hopefully, in that short time period, the Labor Department will hear about the important role its standards play in the preservation of worker health, safety, and rights. American workers depend on rules written by Labor Department agencies like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Mine Safety and Health Administration, and the Wage and Hour Division, as well as the proper enforcement of those rules.

The Labor Department joins the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Homeland Security as the only agencies, as far as I know, to invite public comment on the regulatory review process.