Obama's Appointees Are Flexing Their Regulatory Powers
By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 12, 2009 6:20 PM
The Obama administration is taking on Cheerios. And popular cold remedies and swimming pool drains and rhinestones on children's clothing.
With much of Washington focused on efforts to revamp health care and address climate change, a handful of Obama appointees have been quietly exercising their power over the trappings of daily life. They are awakening a vast regulatory apparatus with authority over nearly every U.S. workplace, 15,000 consumer products and most items found in kitchen pantries and medicine cabinets.
Top appointees at the Food and Drug Administration, for example, have cracked down on dietary supplements with "steroid-like" substances that for years had been sold in gyms and health-food stores. In a move designed as much for symbolism as effect, the new chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission last month dispatched all 100 agency inspectors across the country to enforce a law that requires special drains on swimming pools to prevent children from entrapment. The agency shut down more than 200 pools.
The new regulators display a passion for rules and a belief that government must protect the public from dangers lurking at home and on the job -- one more way the new White House is quietly reworking the relationship between government and business.
(Original here.)
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 12, 2009 6:20 PM
The Obama administration is taking on Cheerios. And popular cold remedies and swimming pool drains and rhinestones on children's clothing.
With much of Washington focused on efforts to revamp health care and address climate change, a handful of Obama appointees have been quietly exercising their power over the trappings of daily life. They are awakening a vast regulatory apparatus with authority over nearly every U.S. workplace, 15,000 consumer products and most items found in kitchen pantries and medicine cabinets.
Top appointees at the Food and Drug Administration, for example, have cracked down on dietary supplements with "steroid-like" substances that for years had been sold in gyms and health-food stores. In a move designed as much for symbolism as effect, the new chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission last month dispatched all 100 agency inspectors across the country to enforce a law that requires special drains on swimming pools to prevent children from entrapment. The agency shut down more than 200 pools.
The new regulators display a passion for rules and a belief that government must protect the public from dangers lurking at home and on the job -- one more way the new White House is quietly reworking the relationship between government and business.
(Original here.)
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