Thanking The Owners
by digby
It seems like only yesterday that Dick Cheney was conducting meetings on energy policy with only members of the industry in attendance. It caused quite a stir for a while but in the end it was determined that there’s nothing wrong with a Republican White House openly whoring for its patrons. (Democrats, as we learned previously, are not even allowed to offer theirs a cup of coffee.) That’s just how it works.
But Darrell Issa, the new scourge of White House secrecy, has taken this to a new level:
In December, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) outsourced his job to business lobbyists when he sent letters to over 150 trade associations and companies, asking them to outline which Obama administration regulations he should target as chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. He sent the letters to a wide array of fossil fuel producers, pharmaceutical companies, manufacturers, telecommunications companies, and other interests. Issa has repeatedly refused to share the responses he received from these industry leaders, even with Democrats on his committee, though he promises to do so soon. While Issa drags his feet, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), the ranking Democrat on Issa’s committee, has sent letters to each group asking for a copy of the responses, noting that “[w]ithholding Committee records is not only a violation of House rules, but a waste of time that could have been avoided with the smallest degree of bipartisan cooperation.” Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has also made the same request of the companies and trade groups, and received 33 voluntary responses. Many heavy-hitting business interests like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Monsanto Corporation, and the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers declined to reply to CREW. But a review of the companies that did voluntarily respond illustrates a concentrated industry push to combat regulations on everything from lead paint standards to EPA emission rules to fire testing of mattresses.
Read on for the details.
I’m sure Issa has only good intentions and that his own secrecy is perfectly reasonable. Certainly, committee chairmen should always ask for their party’s campaign donors’ wish list as their the first act upon taking office. I think this is what they call “free markets.”
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