In Which Zandar Makes A Local Political Endorsement

Well, I'd like to thank Orange Julius for the impetus behind my endorsement here in my local House race in Kentucky's Fourth District, because he's finally gone and given me a reason to make a call here.

OJ has this plan where he wants a moratorium on federal regulations because apparently he feels Obama is trying to do too much to solve America's problems while Boehner here is too busy blaming Obama for not having done enough to fix things.  Odd, I know.

The always excellent Brian Beutler today has more on Orange Julius's more specific plans to stop Obama from regulating things.

House Minority Leader John Boehner has finally gotten specific about his recent call for a moratorium on new federal regulations, and TPM's gotten a look at just what kinds of regulations -- other than the obvious ones implementing health care and Wall Street reforms -- that Boehner's plan would block.

Boehner last week endorsed the REINS Act, sponsored by Rep. Geoff Davis (R-KY), which states that "any rulemaking where the estimated cost to Americans would exceed $100 million," could not go into effect "without Congress voting on it first." That's short of the full moratorium for which Boehner initially called, but could nonetheless be a recipe for gridlock and ugly politics. That standard in the act would ensnare scores of new regulations every year, including both broadly popular, time-sensitive ones, and others over which remain substantial partisan disagreement. 

Now, attentive readers know where I'm going here, because the Republican elected here from KY-4 is none other than my own Congressman, Geoff Davis.  Here in Northern Kentucky the unemployment rate is 10.3% or so and it seems my Congressman's major contribution to legislation that would help the people here is to waste time with the REINS Act.

The REINS (Regulations from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny) Act, while it imposes burdensome congressional oversight of regulations costing more than $100 million, does contain exemptions for emergency situations, enforcement of criminal laws, national security regulations, monetary policy rules proposed by the Fed Board of Governors, and the implementation of international trade agreements. Congress would have to explicitly sign off on everything else before it could take effect. 

Two things here.  Congressional oversight of executive regulations sure as hell didn't matter to these same Republicans when Bush was in charge, and all this is doing is preventing Obama from doing much of anything fiscally.

But most of all, it's Geoff Davis being a douchebag at the command of John Boehner when he should be a hell of a lot more concerned with why and how he deserves to be re-elected when he keeps voting against all the economic relief measures and unemployment benefits, not to mention voting against the stimulus package last year and then going around taking credit for projects here in the NKY that the stimulus funded.

That's more than enough for me to throw my support behind Democrat and Navy veteran John Waltz here in KY-4.