How low can you go?
When I worked at HHS, I occasionally found myself in the odd position of defending this administration to my friends. Some of it (as my husband pointed out) was cognitive dissonance — if I had believed that they were as evil as some of my friends said, I couldn’t have survived working there as long as I did. But it’s also true that, after listening to the political appointees, I often found myself in a position where I disagreed with them, but was convinced that they genuinely believed that their policies (stricter work requirements, marriage promotion activities) were the best ways to help poor children and families.
This spring, OMB issued a directive that said that agencies wouldn’t be allowed to rush through regs at the last minute. I said at the time that I assumed this only applied to regulations they didn’t want to issue, not to ones they did. Sure enough, the Post reported today that DOL is trying to sneak through a regulation that would make it harder to regulate workplace toxins. So I thought I was maybe getting cynical enough.
July 25th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Wow, that is really depressing.
July 26th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
I don’t think the Bush Administration has come even close to scraping the bottom.