NBC Helps Robert Redford Decry Bush's Dastardly Deregulation

There's still time for Bush-bashing on the evening newscasts. On Tuesday's NBC Nightly News, investigative reporter Lisa Myers forwarded the anti-Bush complaints of Robert Redford and the left-wing group OMB Watch. They harshly opposed any attempt by Team Bush to deregulate in the last days.

BRIAN WILLIAMS: In politics, they actually call it the midnight hour. It's when presidents announce pardons and last-minute changes to regulations. That's exactly what's going on right now in the Bush West Wing. We have a closer look tonight from our senior investigative correspondent Lisa Myers.

LISA MYERS: The flurry of midnight maneuvers would open two million acres of Western wilderness in three states to oil shale development, lease pristine areas alongside national parks in Utah for oil drilling, and loosen pollution controls near national parks. And that's just a few of the last-minute moves that infuriate environmentalists, such as actor-director Robert Redford.

ROBERT REDFORD (listed as Natural Resources Defense Council): What kind of investment is that for our children, their children and theirs, to have all of our great monuments and some of the greatest places on the face of the earth destroyed for short-term benefits?

MYERS: President Bush is by no means the first president to lock in his own policies as the clock nears midnight. Every outgoing president since Carter has done it. Bill Clinton issued 26,000 pages of rules in his final days.

JERRY BRITO (Mercatus Center, George Mason University): The end of the presidency, he's really unaccountable. He can do things that are politically unpopular.

The Mercatus Center is a more conservative think tank, and Brito's statement sounds nonpartisan (if a little exaggerated.) Then Myers sits down with OMB Watch at a computer terminal and publicizes their claims:

MATT MADIA (OMB Watch): These are the among the most controversial ones.

MYERS: Matt Madia says Bush's new rules mostly reduce oversight and favor business. Some would allow the government to build dams and projects without consulting the agency in charge of protecting endangered species, broaden the authority of health care workers and hospitals to refuse to provide family planning services, and loosen restrictions on how many hours a trucker can drive.

Mr. MADIA: Once these rules take effect, they really have the force of law; and to reverse that, it could take years for the Obama administration to accomplish.

MYERS: Democrats are trying to figure out which rules the new president can undo quickly when he takes office in January. As for President Bush, his spokesman insists that all of these rules have been carefully vetted and are not being rushed through. Lisa Myers, NBC News, Washington.