In the Washington Post on Saturday, Charles Krauthammer explored in his column how Team Obama is governing around Congress through regulatory agencies. Remember the controversy over Medicare "end-of-life counseling"? The New York Times reported it snuck back in. A month ago, Medicare issued a regulation providing for end-of-life counseling during annual "wellness" visits. Somehow, the rest of the national media that sneered about "death panels" weren't spreading the news:
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), author of Section 1233, was delighted. "Mr. Blumenauer's office celebrated 'a quiet victory,' but urged supporters not to crow about it," reports the New York Times. Deathly quiet. In early November, his office sent an e-mail plea to supporters: "We would ask that you not broadcast this accomplishment out to any of your lists...e-mails can too easily be forwarded." They had been lucky that "thus far, it seems that no press or blogs have discovered it....The longer this [regulation] goes unnoticed, the better our chances of keeping it."
So much for the Democrats' transparency - and for their repeated claim that the more people learn what is in the health-care law, the more they will like it. Turns out ignorance is the Democrats' best hope.
And regulation is their perfect vehicle - so much quieter than legislation. Consider two other regulatory usurpations in just the past few days:
On Dec. 23, the Interior Department issued Secretarial Order 3310, reversing a 2003 decision and giving itself the authority to designate public lands as "Wild Lands." A clever twofer: (1) a bureaucratic power grab - for seven years up through Dec. 22, wilderness designation had been the exclusive province of Congress, and (2) a leftward lurch - more land to be "protected" from such nefarious uses as domestic oil exploration in a country disastrously dependent on foreign sources.
The very same day, the Environmental Protection Agency declared that in 2011 it would begin drawing up anti-carbon regulations on oil refineries and power plants, another power grab effectively enacting what Congress had firmly rejected when presented as cap-and-trade legislation.
For an Obama bureaucrat, however, the will of Congress is a mere speed bump. Hence this regulatory trifecta, each one moving smartly left - and nicely clarifying what the spirit of bipartisan compromise that President Obama heralded in his post-lame-duck Dec. 22 news conference was really about: a shift to the center for public consumption and political appearance only.
But our liberal media are not skeptical of regulatory agencies -- unless they're getting the way of cursing on TV or abortions.
