Fox in the chicken coop at OMB

Our colleagues at our sister site, The Pump Handle, are doing a good job of keeping the public health community aware and apprised of things that often go unnoticed but are of real importance. If TPH isn't one of your daily reads, I'd suggest you make room for it. Yesterday we learned that the Bush administration has just made another of its famed "recess appointments" (remember that supreme nutcase, John Bolton at the UN?). This one goes to Susan Dudley to head OIRA, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Celeste Monforton covered her disqualifications nicely at TPH in her review of Dudley's sorry performance in front of the Senate Committee hearing regarding her nomination. This was when the Republicans were still in control and the Committee Chair was of Bush's own party:

Despite Ms. Dudley's insistence that she "cares deeply about the environment," she didn't impress the members of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. The Bureau of National Affairs (BNA) is reporting that chairman Collins says a vote on the nomination is "pointless" because

"it appears there is no Democratic support on the committee for Susan Dudley." Moreover, BNA reported "Collins declined to say whether Republicans on the committee also objected to the nomination."

(Celeste Monforton, The Pump Handle)

That's bad. Real bad. At the hearing, Dudley was unable even to answer questions about her own writings, much less the major issues facing US regulatory policy. Dudley, formerly of the far right Mercatus Institute, is well-known as an avid opponent of almost any form of regulation. What better person to put in charge of the federal office in a position to block any regulation proposed by a government agency, including OSHA, EPA, FDA or the Bureau of Mines, to name a few. Here are some of Dudley's ideas:

In congressional testimony, Dudley has favored dispensing with costly air pollution controls and initiating a pollution warning system "so that sensitive individuals can take appropriate 'exposure avoidance' behavior" -- mostly by remaining inside.

She opposed stricter limits on arsenic in drinking water, in part because she argued that the Environmental Protection Agency's calculations of the costs and benefits overvalued some lives, particularly those of older people with a small life expectancy.

She has argued that air bags should not be required by government regulation but requested by automobile consumers willing to pay for them. (Joel Havemann, LA TImes via The Pump Handle)

TPH's Montforton wrote last November that the Democratic victory had doomed Dudley's appointment. Then this weekend Congress went into recess and Bush immediately appointed her to the position she could never have been confirmed in.

Now we have an anti-regulatory extremist at the gate of the federal government's system for proposing new regulations. Lovely.