January 1, 2009 • 24 mins
After the election in November, outgoing Presidents have an opportunity to pass last-minute (often unpopular and unpublicized) legislation as 'midnight regulations.' Learn more about midnight regulations in this HowStuffWorks podcast.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from House Stuffworks dot Com? Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Chuck's here. I am as always. How's it going?
You're the Andy Richter to your Conan O'Brien, as I
like to say, I look a little more like Andy Richter. Right,
(00:23):
there's no con in amongst No, no tall seven foot tall, blanky,
redheaded headed irishman. Yeah, pale man, it man, it's pale um. Yes.
But okay, so this is stuff you should know if
you couldn't tell by now. Um, and uh, we're gonna
talk about midnight regulation today, Chuck, what do you think?
I think that's a great, great topic. Okay, So Chuck,
(00:43):
let me paint a scene for you, right, Okay, anytime
a president is is leaving the White House and a
new one's coming in, there are transition teams set up
right right. Um, Basically, you have a bunch of people
who have been doing their jobs, you know, directing federal agents.
He's carrying out new policy, talking about new policy ideas, um,
(01:04):
and they basically need to pass this information onto the
next administration, so that you know, there's a smooth transition
of power. Ideal, ideally, this is what happened. They don't
just put it in a folder called how to be
the President and leave it on the tusk of No,
that would be really really bad. Um. And uh, you know,
some some transition teams are more successful in others. A
(01:26):
president Bill Clinton had a terrible terrible time with it
when he came into power. Um, when he was leaving, though,
he gained a little more confidence. Uh when he left.
George W. Bush, the second Bush, took over, and when
his transition team showed up, they found, um surprisingly that
most most of the keyboards in the in the White
(01:48):
House offices, the letter W had been removed. I love that.
I think that's h It really is hysterical, just just
the thought of and not politically speaking, but just the
thought of a president playing practical joke on on then yeah,
and all of his aids and yeah, and there was
a whoopie cushion left in the chair of his office
chair right yeah, kick me sign right. Um. So so
(02:08):
that was awaiting President Bush when he took over. And um,
there was a lot of other stuff awaiting him as
well in the form of midnight regulations. Uh. Clinton actually
published twenties six thousand pages of new regulations. Yep, that's
the number that we're waiting for his successor, and every
(02:30):
last one of them ran contrary to Bush's policies. So, um, well,
before we get into that, how about what what are
midnight regulations? What's what's the definition? Uh well, I'm just
going off my brain here. I don't have a definition
to read, but it's basically, um legislation that a president
leaving president will try and uh slip through in the
(02:52):
waning months of their of their tenure, during their midnight period,
during their midnight period, which is from the time that
the election is held November until they leave office, basically
until the inauguration. And every every presidency has a midnight
right there's there's the end of a presidency, and it's
those last few months. Um. But some are way worse
(03:12):
than others. Usually the worst midnight periods, the worst transitions
come when one party is losing control of the White
House to another party and they just they do everything
they can to sabotage one another. So it's kind of roughs.
It's so unfriendly and Uh, it's hostile. Yeah, it is.
It's a little disheartening, yeah, but not surprisingly. And basically,
(03:36):
you know, if you if you if you leave thousands
of pages of new regulations, Um, basically, what you're doing
is you're you're either extending your influence as president beyond
the time that you leave the White House. Um, you
could be doing it to hamstring your handicap the next
in the next administration, basically tying their hands, especially when
(04:00):
it's you know, when a Democrats taking over from a
Republican or vice versa. You know, the views run so
contrary supposedly that um, you know, you want to keep
the policy making going, and when it's actually with a
midnight regulation, it's actually exceedingly difficult to um reverse We'll
(04:20):
get to that in a minute. Many times it's it's
actually your legacy as a president has a lot to
do with these midnight regulations. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of
times it's the it represents the more radical fringes of
a presidential agenda. Just amazing that the last two months
of an eight year tenure can have more of an
impact than the previous ye know, seven and uh, seven
(04:41):
years and ten months. Yeah, and well, the weird thing
is it's it's you can sit there and watch midnight
regulation going on right um there there, But it's not
an openly acknowledged activity, okay. UM, So to prove that
it exists, some political scientists have actually, um done studies
(05:02):
on the Federal Register. The Federal Register is the complete
comprehensive guide to federal regulation, and um they published actually
they publish addendums to it every day. So UM, some
p some political scientists went back and looked at when
you know, the amount of pages published in the Federal
Register per quarter, per quarter, um, and they found that
(05:24):
in the midnight of a presidency, especially during um, the
transition of power from one party to another, the pages
the page volume increases like sevent So it's odd to
think that you would have to go prove it, but
you know, the president's like, well, I'm just going about
my midnight regulation right now. It's it's it's such a
cynical and sinister, democratically speaking tool, um, because the president
(05:51):
is no longer accountable and so many people don't even
realize what's going on, and uh, it's it's going on
right now. I know you have a couple of things
you wanted to mention, right, Yeah, I mean I've got
a list. Uh, there's actually a great website called pro
Publica dot org. That's p r O dash publica dot
(06:11):
org and you can get a full list there of
the Midnight regulations at President Bush is trying to get
through and UM not drawn judgment on any of them.
It's up to you to decide. But that's a good
website you can go to to actually read them and
get a status on whether or not it's UM open
for comment or close for comment or under review or
(06:32):
approved or finalized or in effect. And we'll get to
the comment part in a little bit too, right, Yeah, yeah,
we well let's let's let's talk about how it works. Right. So, basically,
the legislative branch identifies a problem UM and says, well,
we we could create this agency to address that problem,
(06:53):
say the Environmental Protection Agency or the Securities and Exchange
Commission or whatever, the FDA, it doesn't matter. All of
those were created by congressional mandate, right, But it's up
to the executive branch, the president's side, to make sure
that these these these mandates are being carried out. And
how that's carried out is left pretty much of the
(07:14):
discretion of the president. Congress can threaten to withhold funding
or something like that. Um. They can also repeal laws.
We'll get to that in a second too, But for
the most part, the president issues regulations or the executive
branch issues rules and regulations on how federal agency should act. Right. So,
(07:34):
if you have a really pro business president, they're probably, um,
not going to give the SEC a lot of power. Um.
And if you have somebody who's very much pro consumer,
the SEC will likely you know, look out for investors
more through these regulations. Right. And it's it's a lot
more than just investors. I mean, just about every aspect
(07:58):
of our lives as Americans is impacted by these regulatory agencies,
you know. I mean like the the the e p A,
the you and I have to go get um admissions
tests every year before we get a new tag. That's
e p A. That's a federal you know regulation. Um.
We can't run around, you know, shooting heroin between our toes.
(08:21):
D A looks out for that kind of thing. Um.
And then there's just a lot more like profanity on television.
That's the uh f CC. So we're impacted in many,
many ways. This isn't like just some high up hierarchy
thing that's going on politically speaking, it's federal agencies are
actually where the government and the public touch. Okay, that's
(08:44):
good way to say it. Thanks, thanks a lot that
so okay, So we're impacted by this, and a president's
views will direct how much we're impacted. Okay. Um, So
these new rules are created, Uh, the the Office of Information,
Information and Regulatory Affairs, they review these things right exactly,
(09:07):
especially if it's big money involved. Yeah, hundred million dollar
impact or more on the economy annually. Right, that's when
they get you know, special attention, right right. Um, So
the the o I r A is supposed to look
at these things, these new proposals, these proposed rules, and
they're also supposed to well, they're supposed to look if
to see if these things are cost with a cost
(09:29):
benefit analysis. Um. They're supposed to look if the rules
even needed, if there's any way to um, you know,
use market forces to stimulate the change that these rules
are meant to address, and any competing theories that may
actually be better competing alternatives to the proposed rule. So
you can imagine for each proposed new regulation. This is
(09:50):
just supposed to take a lot of time. If the
O I R A signs off on the thing, um uh,
an announcement gets published, and they actually publish an anouncement
in the Federal Register when they're first considering it. Then
they publish another announcement saying what the outcome was once
they once the O I R A signs off on it,
(10:10):
and it's published in the Federal Register either thirty days
for kind of smaller things, sixty days for big regulation,
it becomes law. And that's sixty day time period is
pretty important because what a president will do when they're
leaving office. If they hit their deadlines and get these
uh through quick enough, the sixty days is up before
(10:30):
the next president comes in, and it makes it a
lot harder to undo what they've done. Yeah. Yeah, Once
it's become law, you the process to repeal it is
pretty much the reverse of the process to have it
become law. You have to provide studies. Um, you have
to provide alternatives that the president doesn't just come in
and wave his or her magic wand and say everything
(10:55):
my predecessor just said is wrong and it's gone right. Good.
Try but now and that's actually been a proposal to
solve midnight regulation is to allow incoming presidents to repeal
any law passed in the in the midnight period. Um.
This is this is not necessarily the case. Um. This
has never been entertained as far as I know. Seriously,
(11:18):
there are some things you can do as an incoming president, right,
um too to stop this regulation what you got so
once it's uh, the the new administrations in, they have
to show that why repealing it, um is a good idea,
And a lot of times you have to provide an
alternative form of legislation. And then um. Congress actually has
(11:41):
a tool as well, called the Congressional Review Act. And
this came about, which is ironic because the president that
signed that bill into law was the most prolific midnight
regulator of all time, Bill Clinton correct. Um, he had
like twenty six thousand pages published in the regis. Second
to him was Jimmy Carter, whose presidency the term was
(12:05):
coined after, um because he he just took this old
fashioned tool to a brand new level. Um. But yeah,
Clinton signed the c r A in the law right right,
which basically repeals new regulations, allows Congress to repeal these
new regulations with the simple majority in the House and Senate,
(12:25):
and it still requires the president's signature though, so so
it only works sometimes. And the only time that it
works is when the president and Congress are controlled by
the same party, right, um, Because if you have a
president who is coming in and Congress is of an
opposite party, Congress isn't going to take up the c
(12:47):
r A to repeal anything because they were with the
old president, right right. And then if you have a
president who's carrying on the same party from the old
president and Congress is new and of the their party,
they may take up, you know, moves to repeal anything,
and the president is not going to sign off on it, right,
And which explains partially why it hasn't been used that often. Um,
(13:10):
even though in two thousand one that was the case,
I think it was only used one time officially to
repeal one of Billy Boys. Yeah, to repeal a regulations
that would prevent repetitive workplace stress injuries. Interesting, yeah, um.
I think one of the things that I thought was
interesting when I was reading this was one of the reasons,
(13:31):
because I thought, you know, why is it so easy
to get these laws pushed through with the final you know,
final minute. And that's exactly why. It's because this uh
they're overloaded with um you know, like you said, twenty
six thousand pages, but they're not given any extra staff
or anything. And I think I read UH one stat
on one of these environmental laws that the Bush is
working with the e p A for UM. They did
(13:54):
the average time and it was nine seconds for the
amount of employees that he had in the amount of comments.
Nine seconds to read one of these comments and respond
to it. Yeah, they went to two hundred thousand public
comments on one new piece of regulation in four days.
So that kind of answers your question why it's easy
to get these things through. Yeah, because don't forget the
o I r A is part of the Office of
(14:16):
Management and Budget, which is a White House office. The
federal agencies are directed by the president. UM, the the
the group in charge of reviewing these proposals are directed
by the President. It's basically the executive branch running the
show on this new regulation. And you know that it
is it's very easy to get pushed through, and like
I said, it's very cynical use of power. And president
(14:37):
is no longer accountable. Another proposal for any midnight regulation
is not to allow the president to propose any more
regulation during the midnight period, Like you can't make new
laws anymore. Sorry, you've been you know, you've either served
both your terms and somebody else has been selected, or
you've been ousted because someone else has been selected. Either way,
your presidency technically ended in November five. Yeah, I think
(14:59):
that would be more effective because basically what you would
do there is you would have a president who I
think a lot of times administrations kind of hold these
in their back pocket because they know why trying to
introduce its law when it can be debated and when
I can be impeached. Yeah, when I can be impeached,
when I'll just kind of hang onto this and tell
him on my way out and then just kind of
sneak it through the back door busch. Actually, um, I
(15:23):
heard it called the an eleven o'clock regulation flurry. Yeah,
because he his chief of staff, Joshua Bolton, apparently sent
a memo out to all agencies saying, if you want
new stuff, uh, in prepared by June one, so we
can have it passed by November one, which is well
before the deadline. Well, I think they did that because UM,
(15:47):
President Clinton famously did not get his through within the
sixty day period. He waffled until the end, and he
did well. He was busy with defending himself a lot
of that time. That is not making excuses, but there
was a lot going on in his final years. Let's
just say that. Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely true. So yeah,
he didn't get his end on time, and so President
Bush is able to come in and get a lot
(16:08):
of those turned back. Well he he Bush, like Clinton
and Reagan, UH issued an executive order that says just
anything that's under review right now that hasn't been published
in the Federal Register, it's suspended. But you can't you
can't just see that. You have to. You're fighting a
political fight a lot of times. When Busch came in,
(16:29):
one of the things that Clinton had left for him
was UM a new regulation on acceptable arsenic levels in
the water supply and UM just one that was just
one of them. Yeah yeah, yeah, UM. But you know
they would have an impact on business, and UM, as
we all know, Bush is so pro business. You could
(16:49):
also make an argument that he's anti consumer UM and
he's just always kind of been on the side of business, right. Uh,
he didn't like how it impacted things like mining, the
mining industry, water. Um, the water boards who would have
to you know, step up their their water purification, not waterboarding.
(17:10):
Don't get confused that later. Um. So uh, he basically
said this one in particular suspended, and I'm going to
fight it to the death. And he spent a lot
of political capital after he came in fighting this regulation
that he ultimately had to bite and you know, except
and he ended up eating eight percent of them. And
(17:31):
I think he was on record saying that he that
was a big mistake on his part, correct, because he
became painted as a basically an anti environmentalist from the
get go. But that's not necessarily to say that. Um,
that wasn't a deserved reputation from what he's doing right now.
Right most of and if you go to this pro
public A site, most of the midnight regulations he's trying
(17:54):
to get through have the letters E. P. A at
the front of him. So, um, regardless of what side
you're on, they are environmental issues, yes, yes, trying to
stay fair and balanced here, I could read a few
of them to you just by title. We won't get
into the because it would take too long. But UM
power plants be exempted from installing pollution controls. Uh. The
(18:15):
e p A may ease restrictions for power plants near
national parks. UM e p A may allow certain hazardous
waste to be used as fuel. I read another one
about rocket fuel being allowed in drinking water. Uh. Fisheries
have been doing a lot of research on fisheries right
now because I'm writing about fishing quotas and UM, there's
a lot of work being done to basically allow to
(18:37):
push the science out of it. As far as studying
fish populations. Yeah, there won't be any independent scientific review
right right. It's basically saying, deciding whether it has an
environmental impact, Well, the fisheries are going to be deciding that.
And I think we all know the fisheries are probably
gonna say, hey, let's keep fishing. Well let's I read
somebody who's part of a special interest fishing fishery group
(19:01):
who's saying, no, no, that's not true. Well, we'll self regulate.
But I think it's one of those things that's yet
to be seen. Yeah, I'm a bit of a cynic
when it comes to things like companies self regulating themselves. Yeah,
there's not a lot of proof over the years to
kind of you know, back that up. I got another
one for you. Financial planners will no longer have to
disclose any conflict of interest in the advice they give
(19:23):
to anybody. It sounds like a good idea. Yeah, that's
a good one. Um. And there's one called the right
to conscience uh rule. Basically, it says that if you
are a healthcare provider, you you can't not hire somebody
if they would refuse to provide birth control, which basically
(19:44):
then you know you have you have protection. It's the
right to conscience is based on abortion, and a doctor
can refuse to you can't force somebody to perform an abortion.
In other words, they have a right to conscience. This
so basically this extends that to contraception, which now kind
(20:04):
of equates contraception with abortion, which has a lot of
people a little nervous, right, And I think this I
don't think it's the same one, but it's another one
has to do with abortion. It's federally funded institutions can
turn people down for an abortion, um, for moral and
religious reasons. Yeah, I think that's part of the same
one as pretty expansive. Yeah, yeah, so, um, there's a
(20:26):
lot of stuff. We have a lot of a lot
of big changes to look forward to. I also heard
there's some oil drilling going on now in a polar
bear habitat um. But uh, yeah, we'll look to see
what Obama can do because you know, a lot of
these things very much fly contrary to things he's publicly
said he opposes. They they fly in the face of
(20:46):
his views, but he may have a hard time doing
it because Bush did it write it sounds like, yeah,
I think regardless of what political spectrum, what side of
the spectrum you fall on, it's just fascinating to look
at the push in the poll of the transition, you know,
between administrations. It's fascinating. It absolutely is. And also, if
you think about it, what Bush did with the right
(21:07):
to conscience thing, he basically just set Obama up for
a a national fight about abortion right out of the gate.
So it's gonna be really interesting to see how it's handled.
Because he didn't have enough to worry about. Here's this too. Yeah,
so midnight regulations there you have it. Yeah, and you
know what time it is, right, it is time Josh
(21:28):
for listener mail. Alright, so what do we have. I've
got a few quick ones today. I've got a couple
of corrections because we get stuff wrong people. You might
not realize that this is largely unscripted. So we'll bring
up something we didn't even know we were going to
bring up, and sometimes we don't have the exact fact
on that, so we count on the listener to point
(21:49):
us in the right direction. Sometimes. Yeah, that's exactly what
happens in this case. Darryl Kowowski of Denver send us
a message about the O c D podcast, and he
says he wants to make a correction on something about
when I mentioned Chris Jackson the basketball player uh changed
his name to uh Mammad Abdulla rauf In, and he
(22:11):
actually had Taurette syndrome, not O c D. There's kind
of a big difference. Uh, actually there's not really. Yeah,
so I will school you like a school darrel in
my email reply, or like Chris Jackson at school, both
of us in basketball. Yeah, but actually I'm not bad. Alright,
I'm pretty sure Chris Jackson could. Yeah, well, if he's
done tying his shoes, which was part of the problem.
(22:32):
Tourette's and o c D actually are often misdiagnosed as
one to the other because they have a lot of
the same symptoms. So one of his deals was he
spent so much time trying his shoes or to hit
the perfect shot be where he left the court. So
that was actually Turette's at work. But they're very similar
in some minds. Hey, brief aside, have you ever seen
the documentary Twitch and Shout. No, It's about Turette's and
(22:53):
it is one of the best documentaries I've ever seen
in my life. Add that to my cue. Yeah, I
have another one. Um on guerrilla gardening. Someone wrote in
from the Netherlands, our friends in Holland. Dave Inn says
that Josh's comment on Bowery being a Dutch farm is wrong.
Uh that was true in the old days, but that
(23:14):
word is long gone basically in the Netherlands, and now
the word for farm is uh pronounced. Gave me an
English pronunciation. I think it is borderie, border eye or borderie,
and that's what a farm is now in the Netherlands.
I need to brush up on my Dutch. So we
were wrong. Now I could I could really make my
way in like, you know, sixteenth century, never the Netherlands.
(23:36):
You well, apparently now they'd be like, what the hell
are you talking about? Right, And I've got a final
quick one from our fan, Devin Wallace wrote in Basically
he was one of these guys that right, Simon says, hey,
you say my name on the air, and I wrote
him back and said, no, no, Devon, that's not how
it works. You need to give me something. So I
requested that Devon, right, a hi ku And if you
did that, then we mentioned so here's the hiku mountains
(23:59):
and verse. Red squirrels hiding in trees, huge rocks in
the park. Beautiful And depending on whether you think squirrel
is two syllables or one, I'm debating his well, I
say one syllable, in which cases is not a hiku.
Oh just roll would make it a hi k? Yeah,
(24:20):
hi Q. We'll go with that. We'll go with that, right,
So thanks Devin for the hiku. Now, well done, squirre roll,
squirre roll. Well, if you want to learn more about
squirrel rolls, um midnight regulations of course, and actually we
have a great video on turettes on the site. You
can find all that stuff at how stuff works dot com.
(24:44):
For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff works dot Com brought to you by
the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready, Are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from House Stuffworks dot Com? Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Chuck's here. I am as always. How's it going?
You're the Andy Richter to your Conan O'Brien, as I
like to say, I look a little more like Andy Richter. Right,
(00:23):
there's no con in amongst No, no tall seven foot tall, blanky,
redheaded headed irishman. Yeah, pale man, it man, it's pale um. Yes.
But okay, so this is stuff you should know if
you couldn't tell by now. Um, and uh, we're gonna
talk about midnight regulation today, Chuck, what do you think?
I think that's a great, great topic. Okay, So Chuck,
(00:43):
let me paint a scene for you, right, Okay, anytime
a president is is leaving the White House and a
new one's coming in, there are transition teams set up
right right. Um, Basically, you have a bunch of people
who have been doing their jobs, you know, directing federal agents.
He's carrying out new policy, talking about new policy ideas, um,
(01:04):
and they basically need to pass this information onto the
next administration, so that you know, there's a smooth transition
of power. Ideal, ideally, this is what happened. They don't
just put it in a folder called how to be
the President and leave it on the tusk of No,
that would be really really bad. Um. And uh, you know,
some some transition teams are more successful in others. A
(01:26):
president Bill Clinton had a terrible terrible time with it
when he came into power. Um, when he was leaving, though,
he gained a little more confidence. Uh when he left.
George W. Bush, the second Bush, took over, and when
his transition team showed up, they found, um surprisingly that
most most of the keyboards in the in the White
(01:48):
House offices, the letter W had been removed. I love that.
I think that's h It really is hysterical, just just
the thought of and not politically speaking, but just the
thought of a president playing practical joke on on then yeah,
and all of his aids and yeah, and there was
a whoopie cushion left in the chair of his office
chair right yeah, kick me sign right. Um. So so
(02:08):
that was awaiting President Bush when he took over. And um,
there was a lot of other stuff awaiting him as
well in the form of midnight regulations. Uh. Clinton actually
published twenties six thousand pages of new regulations. Yep, that's
the number that we're waiting for his successor, and every
(02:30):
last one of them ran contrary to Bush's policies. So, um, well,
before we get into that, how about what what are
midnight regulations? What's what's the definition? Uh well, I'm just
going off my brain here. I don't have a definition
to read, but it's basically, um legislation that a president
leaving president will try and uh slip through in the
(02:52):
waning months of their of their tenure, during their midnight period,
during their midnight period, which is from the time that
the election is held November until they leave office, basically
until the inauguration. And every every presidency has a midnight
right there's there's the end of a presidency, and it's
those last few months. Um. But some are way worse
(03:12):
than others. Usually the worst midnight periods, the worst transitions
come when one party is losing control of the White
House to another party and they just they do everything
they can to sabotage one another. So it's kind of roughs.
It's so unfriendly and Uh, it's hostile. Yeah, it is.
It's a little disheartening, yeah, but not surprisingly. And basically,
(03:36):
you know, if you if you if you leave thousands
of pages of new regulations, Um, basically, what you're doing
is you're you're either extending your influence as president beyond
the time that you leave the White House. Um, you
could be doing it to hamstring your handicap the next
in the next administration, basically tying their hands, especially when
(04:00):
it's you know, when a Democrats taking over from a
Republican or vice versa. You know, the views run so
contrary supposedly that um, you know, you want to keep
the policy making going, and when it's actually with a
midnight regulation, it's actually exceedingly difficult to um reverse We'll
(04:20):
get to that in a minute. Many times it's it's
actually your legacy as a president has a lot to
do with these midnight regulations. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of
times it's the it represents the more radical fringes of
a presidential agenda. Just amazing that the last two months
of an eight year tenure can have more of an
impact than the previous ye know, seven and uh, seven
(04:41):
years and ten months. Yeah, and well, the weird thing
is it's it's you can sit there and watch midnight
regulation going on right um there there, But it's not
an openly acknowledged activity, okay. UM, So to prove that
it exists, some political scientists have actually, um done studies
(05:02):
on the Federal Register. The Federal Register is the complete
comprehensive guide to federal regulation, and um they published actually
they publish addendums to it every day. So UM, some
p some political scientists went back and looked at when
you know, the amount of pages published in the Federal
Register per quarter, per quarter, um, and they found that
(05:24):
in the midnight of a presidency, especially during um, the
transition of power from one party to another, the pages
the page volume increases like sevent So it's odd to
think that you would have to go prove it, but
you know, the president's like, well, I'm just going about
my midnight regulation right now. It's it's it's such a
cynical and sinister, democratically speaking tool, um, because the president
(05:51):
is no longer accountable and so many people don't even
realize what's going on, and uh, it's it's going on
right now. I know you have a couple of things
you wanted to mention, right, Yeah, I mean I've got
a list. Uh, there's actually a great website called pro
Publica dot org. That's p r O dash publica dot
(06:11):
org and you can get a full list there of
the Midnight regulations at President Bush is trying to get
through and UM not drawn judgment on any of them.
It's up to you to decide. But that's a good
website you can go to to actually read them and
get a status on whether or not it's UM open
for comment or close for comment or under review or
(06:32):
approved or finalized or in effect. And we'll get to
the comment part in a little bit too, right, Yeah, yeah,
we well let's let's let's talk about how it works. Right. So, basically,
the legislative branch identifies a problem UM and says, well,
we we could create this agency to address that problem,
(06:53):
say the Environmental Protection Agency or the Securities and Exchange
Commission or whatever, the FDA, it doesn't matter. All of
those were created by congressional mandate, right, But it's up
to the executive branch, the president's side, to make sure
that these these these mandates are being carried out. And
how that's carried out is left pretty much of the
(07:14):
discretion of the president. Congress can threaten to withhold funding
or something like that. Um. They can also repeal laws.
We'll get to that in a second too, But for
the most part, the president issues regulations or the executive
branch issues rules and regulations on how federal agency should act. Right. So,
(07:34):
if you have a really pro business president, they're probably, um,
not going to give the SEC a lot of power. Um.
And if you have somebody who's very much pro consumer,
the SEC will likely you know, look out for investors
more through these regulations. Right. And it's it's a lot
more than just investors. I mean, just about every aspect
(07:58):
of our lives as Americans is impacted by these regulatory agencies,
you know. I mean like the the the e p A,
the you and I have to go get um admissions
tests every year before we get a new tag. That's
e p A. That's a federal you know regulation. Um.
We can't run around, you know, shooting heroin between our toes.
(08:21):
D A looks out for that kind of thing. Um.
And then there's just a lot more like profanity on television.
That's the uh f CC. So we're impacted in many,
many ways. This isn't like just some high up hierarchy
thing that's going on politically speaking, it's federal agencies are
actually where the government and the public touch. Okay, that's
(08:44):
good way to say it. Thanks, thanks a lot that
so okay, So we're impacted by this, and a president's
views will direct how much we're impacted. Okay. Um, So
these new rules are created, Uh, the the Office of Information,
Information and Regulatory Affairs, they review these things right exactly,
(09:07):
especially if it's big money involved. Yeah, hundred million dollar
impact or more on the economy annually. Right, that's when
they get you know, special attention, right right. Um, So
the the o I r A is supposed to look
at these things, these new proposals, these proposed rules, and
they're also supposed to well, they're supposed to look if
to see if these things are cost with a cost
(09:29):
benefit analysis. Um. They're supposed to look if the rules
even needed, if there's any way to um, you know,
use market forces to stimulate the change that these rules
are meant to address, and any competing theories that may
actually be better competing alternatives to the proposed rule. So
you can imagine for each proposed new regulation. This is
(09:50):
just supposed to take a lot of time. If the
O I R A signs off on the thing, um uh,
an announcement gets published, and they actually publish an anouncement
in the Federal Register when they're first considering it. Then
they publish another announcement saying what the outcome was once
they once the O I R A signs off on it,
(10:10):
and it's published in the Federal Register either thirty days
for kind of smaller things, sixty days for big regulation,
it becomes law. And that's sixty day time period is
pretty important because what a president will do when they're
leaving office. If they hit their deadlines and get these
uh through quick enough, the sixty days is up before
(10:30):
the next president comes in, and it makes it a
lot harder to undo what they've done. Yeah. Yeah, Once
it's become law, you the process to repeal it is
pretty much the reverse of the process to have it
become law. You have to provide studies. Um, you have
to provide alternatives that the president doesn't just come in
and wave his or her magic wand and say everything
(10:55):
my predecessor just said is wrong and it's gone right. Good.
Try but now and that's actually been a proposal to
solve midnight regulation is to allow incoming presidents to repeal
any law passed in the in the midnight period. Um.
This is this is not necessarily the case. Um. This
has never been entertained as far as I know. Seriously,
(11:18):
there are some things you can do as an incoming president, right,
um too to stop this regulation what you got so
once it's uh, the the new administrations in, they have
to show that why repealing it, um is a good idea,
And a lot of times you have to provide an
alternative form of legislation. And then um. Congress actually has
(11:41):
a tool as well, called the Congressional Review Act. And
this came about, which is ironic because the president that
signed that bill into law was the most prolific midnight
regulator of all time, Bill Clinton correct. Um, he had
like twenty six thousand pages published in the regis. Second
to him was Jimmy Carter, whose presidency the term was
(12:05):
coined after, um because he he just took this old
fashioned tool to a brand new level. Um. But yeah,
Clinton signed the c r A in the law right right,
which basically repeals new regulations, allows Congress to repeal these
new regulations with the simple majority in the House and Senate,
(12:25):
and it still requires the president's signature though, so so
it only works sometimes. And the only time that it
works is when the president and Congress are controlled by
the same party, right, um, Because if you have a
president who is coming in and Congress is of an
opposite party, Congress isn't going to take up the c
(12:47):
r A to repeal anything because they were with the
old president, right right. And then if you have a
president who's carrying on the same party from the old
president and Congress is new and of the their party,
they may take up, you know, moves to repeal anything,
and the president is not going to sign off on it, right,
And which explains partially why it hasn't been used that often. Um,
(13:10):
even though in two thousand one that was the case,
I think it was only used one time officially to
repeal one of Billy Boys. Yeah, to repeal a regulations
that would prevent repetitive workplace stress injuries. Interesting, yeah, um.
I think one of the things that I thought was
interesting when I was reading this was one of the reasons,
(13:31):
because I thought, you know, why is it so easy
to get these laws pushed through with the final you know,
final minute. And that's exactly why. It's because this uh
they're overloaded with um you know, like you said, twenty
six thousand pages, but they're not given any extra staff
or anything. And I think I read UH one stat
on one of these environmental laws that the Bush is
working with the e p A for UM. They did
(13:54):
the average time and it was nine seconds for the
amount of employees that he had in the amount of comments.
Nine seconds to read one of these comments and respond
to it. Yeah, they went to two hundred thousand public
comments on one new piece of regulation in four days.
So that kind of answers your question why it's easy
to get these things through. Yeah, because don't forget the
o I r A is part of the Office of
(14:16):
Management and Budget, which is a White House office. The
federal agencies are directed by the president. UM, the the
the group in charge of reviewing these proposals are directed
by the President. It's basically the executive branch running the
show on this new regulation. And you know that it
is it's very easy to get pushed through, and like
I said, it's very cynical use of power. And president
(14:37):
is no longer accountable. Another proposal for any midnight regulation
is not to allow the president to propose any more
regulation during the midnight period, Like you can't make new
laws anymore. Sorry, you've been you know, you've either served
both your terms and somebody else has been selected, or
you've been ousted because someone else has been selected. Either way,
your presidency technically ended in November five. Yeah, I think
(14:59):
that would be more effective because basically what you would
do there is you would have a president who I
think a lot of times administrations kind of hold these
in their back pocket because they know why trying to
introduce its law when it can be debated and when
I can be impeached. Yeah, when I can be impeached,
when I'll just kind of hang onto this and tell
him on my way out and then just kind of
sneak it through the back door busch. Actually, um, I
(15:23):
heard it called the an eleven o'clock regulation flurry. Yeah,
because he his chief of staff, Joshua Bolton, apparently sent
a memo out to all agencies saying, if you want
new stuff, uh, in prepared by June one, so we
can have it passed by November one, which is well
before the deadline. Well, I think they did that because UM,
(15:47):
President Clinton famously did not get his through within the
sixty day period. He waffled until the end, and he
did well. He was busy with defending himself a lot
of that time. That is not making excuses, but there
was a lot going on in his final years. Let's
just say that. Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely true. So yeah,
he didn't get his end on time, and so President
Bush is able to come in and get a lot
(16:08):
of those turned back. Well he he Bush, like Clinton
and Reagan, UH issued an executive order that says just
anything that's under review right now that hasn't been published
in the Federal Register, it's suspended. But you can't you
can't just see that. You have to. You're fighting a
political fight a lot of times. When Busch came in,
(16:29):
one of the things that Clinton had left for him
was UM a new regulation on acceptable arsenic levels in
the water supply and UM just one that was just
one of them. Yeah yeah, yeah, UM. But you know
they would have an impact on business, and UM, as
we all know, Bush is so pro business. You could
(16:49):
also make an argument that he's anti consumer UM and
he's just always kind of been on the side of business, right. Uh,
he didn't like how it impacted things like mining, the
mining industry, water. Um, the water boards who would have
to you know, step up their their water purification, not waterboarding.
(17:10):
Don't get confused that later. Um. So uh, he basically
said this one in particular suspended, and I'm going to
fight it to the death. And he spent a lot
of political capital after he came in fighting this regulation
that he ultimately had to bite and you know, except
and he ended up eating eight percent of them. And
(17:31):
I think he was on record saying that he that
was a big mistake on his part, correct, because he
became painted as a basically an anti environmentalist from the
get go. But that's not necessarily to say that. Um,
that wasn't a deserved reputation from what he's doing right now.
Right most of and if you go to this pro
public A site, most of the midnight regulations he's trying
(17:54):
to get through have the letters E. P. A at
the front of him. So, um, regardless of what side
you're on, they are environmental issues, yes, yes, trying to
stay fair and balanced here, I could read a few
of them to you just by title. We won't get
into the because it would take too long. But UM
power plants be exempted from installing pollution controls. Uh. The
(18:15):
e p A may ease restrictions for power plants near
national parks. UM e p A may allow certain hazardous
waste to be used as fuel. I read another one
about rocket fuel being allowed in drinking water. Uh. Fisheries
have been doing a lot of research on fisheries right
now because I'm writing about fishing quotas and UM, there's
a lot of work being done to basically allow to
(18:37):
push the science out of it. As far as studying
fish populations. Yeah, there won't be any independent scientific review
right right. It's basically saying, deciding whether it has an
environmental impact, Well, the fisheries are going to be deciding that.
And I think we all know the fisheries are probably
gonna say, hey, let's keep fishing. Well let's I read
somebody who's part of a special interest fishing fishery group
(19:01):
who's saying, no, no, that's not true. Well, we'll self regulate.
But I think it's one of those things that's yet
to be seen. Yeah, I'm a bit of a cynic
when it comes to things like companies self regulating themselves. Yeah,
there's not a lot of proof over the years to
kind of you know, back that up. I got another
one for you. Financial planners will no longer have to
disclose any conflict of interest in the advice they give
(19:23):
to anybody. It sounds like a good idea. Yeah, that's
a good one. Um. And there's one called the right
to conscience uh rule. Basically, it says that if you
are a healthcare provider, you you can't not hire somebody
if they would refuse to provide birth control, which basically
(19:44):
then you know you have you have protection. It's the
right to conscience is based on abortion, and a doctor
can refuse to you can't force somebody to perform an abortion.
In other words, they have a right to conscience. This
so basically this extends that to contraception, which now kind
(20:04):
of equates contraception with abortion, which has a lot of
people a little nervous, right, And I think this I
don't think it's the same one, but it's another one
has to do with abortion. It's federally funded institutions can
turn people down for an abortion, um, for moral and
religious reasons. Yeah, I think that's part of the same
one as pretty expansive. Yeah, yeah, so, um, there's a
(20:26):
lot of stuff. We have a lot of a lot
of big changes to look forward to. I also heard
there's some oil drilling going on now in a polar
bear habitat um. But uh, yeah, we'll look to see
what Obama can do because you know, a lot of
these things very much fly contrary to things he's publicly
said he opposes. They they fly in the face of
(20:46):
his views, but he may have a hard time doing
it because Bush did it write it sounds like, yeah,
I think regardless of what political spectrum, what side of
the spectrum you fall on, it's just fascinating to look
at the push in the poll of the transition, you know,
between administrations. It's fascinating. It absolutely is. And also, if
you think about it, what Bush did with the right
(21:07):
to conscience thing, he basically just set Obama up for
a a national fight about abortion right out of the gate.
So it's gonna be really interesting to see how it's handled.
Because he didn't have enough to worry about. Here's this too. Yeah,
so midnight regulations there you have it. Yeah, and you
know what time it is, right, it is time Josh
(21:28):
for listener mail. Alright, so what do we have. I've
got a few quick ones today. I've got a couple
of corrections because we get stuff wrong people. You might
not realize that this is largely unscripted. So we'll bring
up something we didn't even know we were going to
bring up, and sometimes we don't have the exact fact
on that, so we count on the listener to point
(21:49):
us in the right direction. Sometimes. Yeah, that's exactly what
happens in this case. Darryl Kowowski of Denver send us
a message about the O c D podcast, and he
says he wants to make a correction on something about
when I mentioned Chris Jackson the basketball player uh changed
his name to uh Mammad Abdulla rauf In, and he
(22:11):
actually had Taurette syndrome, not O c D. There's kind
of a big difference. Uh, actually there's not really. Yeah,
so I will school you like a school darrel in
my email reply, or like Chris Jackson at school, both
of us in basketball. Yeah, but actually I'm not bad. Alright,
I'm pretty sure Chris Jackson could. Yeah, well, if he's
done tying his shoes, which was part of the problem.
(22:32):
Tourette's and o c D actually are often misdiagnosed as
one to the other because they have a lot of
the same symptoms. So one of his deals was he
spent so much time trying his shoes or to hit
the perfect shot be where he left the court. So
that was actually Turette's at work. But they're very similar
in some minds. Hey, brief aside, have you ever seen
the documentary Twitch and Shout. No, It's about Turette's and
(22:53):
it is one of the best documentaries I've ever seen
in my life. Add that to my cue. Yeah, I
have another one. Um on guerrilla gardening. Someone wrote in
from the Netherlands, our friends in Holland. Dave Inn says
that Josh's comment on Bowery being a Dutch farm is wrong.
Uh that was true in the old days, but that
(23:14):
word is long gone basically in the Netherlands, and now
the word for farm is uh pronounced. Gave me an
English pronunciation. I think it is borderie, border eye or borderie,
and that's what a farm is now in the Netherlands.
I need to brush up on my Dutch. So we
were wrong. Now I could I could really make my
way in like, you know, sixteenth century, never the Netherlands.
(23:36):
You well, apparently now they'd be like, what the hell
are you talking about? Right, And I've got a final
quick one from our fan, Devin Wallace wrote in Basically
he was one of these guys that right, Simon says, hey,
you say my name on the air, and I wrote
him back and said, no, no, Devon, that's not how
it works. You need to give me something. So I
requested that Devon, right, a hi ku And if you
did that, then we mentioned so here's the hiku mountains
(23:59):
and verse. Red squirrels hiding in trees, huge rocks in
the park. Beautiful And depending on whether you think squirrel
is two syllables or one, I'm debating his well, I
say one syllable, in which cases is not a hiku.
Oh just roll would make it a hi k? Yeah,
(24:20):
hi Q. We'll go with that. We'll go with that, right,
So thanks Devin for the hiku. Now, well done, squirre roll,
squirre roll. Well, if you want to learn more about
squirrel rolls, um midnight regulations of course, and actually we
have a great video on turettes on the site. You
can find all that stuff at how stuff works dot com.
(24:44):
For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff works dot Com brought to you by
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