WASHINGTON — Four Senate Democrats are working with Republicans to help the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other GOP-affiliated lobbying groups undermine financial and environmental regulations.
A new bill would significantly change the way government agencies write rules, weighing regulators down with new costs and opening the door to a swarm of legal challenges from corporate interests. Although the legislation would apply to all independent federal regulatory agencies, bank watchdogs have found it particularly alarming in light of Wall Street’s ongoing success in overruling new financial standards in court.
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And indeed, the Moran-Warner bill is comparatively modest, next to a House cost-benefit bill that passed last week in spite of a veto threat from President Barack Obama. The current Senate language, for instance, explicitly bars the new analyses from “judicial review” — an attempt to prevent an endless string of opportunities for companies to challenge new rules.
But financial watchdogs say that in practice, that provision would be essentially meaningless. Since the bill doesn’t provide agencies with any new funding to carry out their analyses, it’s very likely that the SEC and other regulators would simply engage in a single, more detailed round of calculations. While that study could not be challenged in court under the new law, it could still be attacked under existing statutes. In effect, the law would arm corporate lawyers with a host of new details to critique in court.
