Congressman to Introduce Proposal for Time Traveling to 1991
What's the latest and greatest jobs proposal from the pride of the nation, your 112th Congress? This week, it's called "taking the week off." But when the House comes back for its light work schedule next week, longtime Alaska Rep. Don Young plans to introduce this... thing: A bill "to repeal every single federal regulation put in place since 1991." Lord knows how many all-nighters his staff pulled tweaking the details of this beast.
So why 1991? To honor the 20th anniversary of Nevermind, or because it just sounded like the appropriate completely arbitrary year to dial back to? More of the latter:
"My bill is very simple, I just null and void any regulations passed in the last 20 years," Young told the Anchorage Downtown Rotary Club. "I picked 20 years ago because it crossed party lines and also we were prosperous at that time. And no new regulations until they can justify them."
At least some members of the Rotary crowd appeared taken aback by the breadth of what Young appeared to be saying, given all of the passenger jet safety, pesticide, food safety, banking and other regulations that have come into place since 1991.
Indeed, 1991 was a very prosperous year, aside from the recession.
When pressed, however, about the many regulations that people would prefer to keep, a spokesman followed up with this confusing revision: "The idea behind the legislation is simple; if an agency cannot justify the benefit of a regulation, then it has no business being on the books. The intent of this legislation is to reverse the regulatory overreach by the federal government, not to repeal regulations that are critical to the safety of Alaskans."
So it's a bill to repeal all regulations put in place since utopian recession days of 1991, except for the ones that it doesn't repeal. Hmm... this seems like it could get caught up in the committee process for a while?
[Image via AP]