And
more corporate welfare is not the answer
You want to impose CONDITIONS on my bail-out money? How dare you! |
Assuming
the right safeguards are put in place, these payments may be justified. Yet
there is a risk that big business may also seek another kind of assistance
whose benefit is more dubious: relief from regulations.
Some
loosening of restrictions make sense in a crisis, and federal regulators are
already taking steps to address immediate needs.
The FDA is changing rules so that private labs and state health departments can
more readily use covid-19 tests developed outside of the agency. HHS is
allowing healthcare providers to bill Medicare for telemedicine sessions.
Those
are the no-brainers. But what about the decision by the Federal Motor Carrier
Safety Administration to relax restrictions on truck driver hours for those
making emergency deliveries? Do we want sleepy drivers on the road, even if
they are doing essential work?
And
then there are the calls from big banks for lower capital
requirements and the easing of periodic stress tests. The point of those
requirements is to make sure banks are in a position to weather a downturn.
Relaxing the rules is something the big banks were urging well before the
pandemic, and their push now may be little more than an effort to exploit the
crisis.
We are likely to see more calls for regulatory easing both from corporations and from Trump Administration agencies such as the EPA that have already been trying to undermine existing safeguards.
There
is also a debate on whether regulatory rulemaking should continue at a time
when many regulators are working from home and many advocates may have a harder
time monitoring current proceedings.
Since
many of those proceedings involve efforts by industry and the Trump Administration
to roll back or eliminate current rules, delays would provide a welcome
obstacle to the deregulatory juggernaut.
On the other hand, agencies may use the pandemic as an excuse to reduce the opportunities for public interest groups to intervene in the process.
On the other hand, agencies may use the pandemic as an excuse to reduce the opportunities for public interest groups to intervene in the process.
Another
gnarly question is how to handle bailouts for corporations that have less than
stellar records when it comes to regulatory compliance.
We don’t want to ignore the needs of employees of those companies who might otherwise lose their jobs, but it also doesn’t feel right to be handing over large sums to firms that have flouted the law.
We don’t want to ignore the needs of employees of those companies who might otherwise lose their jobs, but it also doesn’t feel right to be handing over large sums to firms that have flouted the law.
If
those payments are going to happen, among the strings that need to be attached
could be provisions requiring companies to strictly adhere to all applicable
laws and regulations. Scofflaws would be compelled to repay the money and face
other serious consequences.
Big
business should not be allowed to use the covid-19 pandemic as cover for
undermining safeguards that protect us from the many other dangers in the
world.
Note: Violation
Tracker has just been updated. It now contains more than
412,000 entries representing more than $616 billion in penalties. The
corporation with the biggest jump in its penalty total is Wells Fargo, due to
its recent $3 billion sham-account settlement with the federal government.