Cases of Quayle Council Interference

In the two years Vice President Dan Quayle chaired the Council on Competitiveness, the Council interfered in, stalled, or killed dozens of regulatory programs and issued sweeping policy reports with both legislative and regulatory proposals on issues such as biotechnology and product liability. Some examples:

1. The Quayle Council paved the way for interference by the White House in an important Clean Air Act rule that would allow electric utilities to evade pollution controls.

2. The Council worked to weaken a proposal to cut pollution over the Grand Canyon caused by a nearby power plant that created a haze over the Canyon and impaired visibility.

3. The Council targeted worker safety when it intervened in an OSHA rulemaking to block much needed protections for workers exposed to formaldehyde.

4. The Council planted a gaping loophole in the EPA's Clean Air Act permitting proposal, allowing polluters to increase toxic emissions -- as long as state authorities do not object to the pollution increase within seven days.

5. The Council killed a recycling requirement in an EPA incinerator rule after just one short meeting. The most ambitious portion of the rule would have required incinerator operators to separate out 25 percent of the re-usable items before burning garbage. The Council thought it was too costly -- even though the EPA found it would save money in the long run.

6. Lead acid batteries are the source of 60 percent of the lead in the country's garbage. High levels of lead in incinerator ash can have devastating health and environmental effects; for example, exposure to lead is known to cause brain damage in children. Nonetheless, the Council gave the burning of lead acid batteries a boost last December when it killed an EPA rule banning this toxic practice.

7. The Quayle Council delayed regulations setting tough new quality standards for medical laboratories, convincing the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to extend the public comment period in order to delay the regulations.

8. The Quayle Council successfully encouraged President Bush to veto critical revision in the Orphan Drug Act which would have increased competition among drug companies and led to lower drug prices for people suffering from diseases such as AIDS and growth disorders.

9. After meeting privately with business groups, the Quayle Council worked behind the scenes to force a new policy on the EPA that rolled back protection on as much as 30 million acres of wetlands. Wetlands serve as filters for toxic chemical pollution, help slow erosion, and provide a habitat for a vast array of wildlife and plants.

History

Under the Bush Administration, this centralization of regulatory reviews and the secrecy under which they occurred was heightened. The emergence of the Council on Competitiveness, chaired by Vice President Dan Quayle, and the regulatory moratorium which began January 1991 further subordinated good management practices to the ideological fervor of free market interests -- even when congressionally-mandated efforts to clean up the environment, protect worker health and safety, and enforce consumer protections have been imposed.

The need to balance between over-regulating on the one hand, and protecting the public and enforcing laws on the other, is critical. However, the Bush Administration used the White House to serve as a backdoor for the rich and powerful to gain an unfair advantage in the regulatory process. Many people along with small to mid-size businesses, suffered from this ideologically-driven deregulatory agenda.

Earlier in 1992, widespread concern about the backdoor dealings of Dan Quayle's Council on Competitiveness brought together a broad-based coalition of more than 40 national organizations and unions to work toward halting the Council's deregulatory damage. But the coalition was handed a setback when it lost its attempt to defund the Council. After the House voted 236-183 to defund the Council, there was a Senate filibuster of Sen. John Glenn's (D-OH) bill to do the same. That set the stage for a conference committee face-off. In the end, a resistant Sen. Dennis DeConcini (R-AZ) was able to significantly water down the House proposal and save the Council's funds.

Quayle's Council on Competitiveness interfered in an unknown number of regulatory programs, promoted anti-consumer policy proposals, and backed an array of deregulatory, pro-business legislative initiatives. Due in large part to the attention drawn by a report on the council, co-authored by OMB Watch and Public Citizen's Congress Watch, as well as widespread media coverage of the Quayle Council's role in the wetlands debate and the vice president's civil litigation reform proposals, the Council finally received some of the attention it deserved. A hearing before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, revealed the many ways the Council usurped congressional authority and hijacked the agency rule-making process.

There were reports of conflict of interest on the Council as well. Press accounts revealed that Allan Hubbard, the executive director of the Quayle Council on Competitiveness, was half-owner of an Indiana chemical company, and consequently may have had a conflict of interest in carrying out his public role. According to a report released by OMB Watch and Public Citizen, Hubbard also owned stock in an electric utility company, another industry subject to new Clean Air Act requirements. In response to these conflict of interest charges the White House has held up a waiver from conflict of interest laws that Quayle granted Hubbard in June 1991.