Stephen Gottlieb: Freedom For The Boss - Drudgery For The Rest Of Us

I keep looking for ways to talk with supporters of the Administration. President Carter started the deregulation frenzy. That has become half of the Republican cut-and-deregulate refrain ever since, consistently repeated by the current White House and the Republicans in Congress. I’d like to focus on the things that will affect those of us who are, financially speaking, ordinary, middle-class Americans.

Here are changes the Administration and congressional Republicans are considering that affect working conditions:

·         The White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs has been postponing and considering cutting down a Labor Department rule that limits “workers' exposure [to] toxic material, which can cause a deadly lung disease.”

·         The same White House Office is also “considering a proposal to roll back protections for workers in construction and shipbuilding.”

o   Those rules allow our employers to save cash by risking our health.

“The Working Families Flexibility Act … would give employees a choice between taking time off or being paid time-and-a-half when they work more than 40 hours in a week.”

·         Either way, Republicans oppose changing overtime rules to raise eligibility for overtime above the current $23,660 per year.

o   Those rules allow our employers to save cash by shortchange us.

Here are some that affect the health of financially ordinary Americans:

·         The Administraton has already taken steps to “roll back healthy school lunch standards”

·         The new head of the FDA “has invested in or consulted for dozens of healthcare companies” which suggests that the Food and Drug Administration won’t be much help in preventing unnecessary complications and expenses.

·         The House health care bill would eliminate Obamacare requirements that insurance plans cover prescriptions drugs and mental healthcare. Like all insurance, drug and mental health care coverage are intended to protect people from unplanned changes in the costs of survival.

·         Senate Republicans narrowly lost an effort to roll back a regulation that “limit[s] methane emissions from oil and natural gas drilling.” Methane is even more damaging to the climate than carbon.

o   Those rules risk our health for the sake of other people’s profits.

On savings for retirement:

·         “Trump’s Labor Department delayed the so-called fiduciary rule, ordering financial advisers to act in … [your] best interest[s] … [if you] are saving for retirement.”

·         The CHOICE Act would allow the banks that brought us the crash of 2008 to opt out of regulations adopted after the crash and intended to prevent another. And the bill renames the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and “reduces its power to enforce pre-existing consumer protection laws.”

o   Those rules risk our financial security for the sake of other people’s profits.

Meanwhile, Republicans on the Supreme Court show little respect for working men and women.

·         With Breyer’s help they have blessed “Professional debt collectors … [who] built a business out of buying stale debt, filing claims in bankruptcy proceedings to collect it, and hoping that no one notices that the debt is too old to be enforced by the courts.”

·         The Court continues to apply a 1925 statute intended for interstate business transactions to consumer contracts and the Court bars state regulation entirely.

What Republicans continue to give us is freedom for the boss and drudgery for the rest of us. As the old folk song has it, “same song, second verse, could get better but it’s gonna get worse.”

The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.