Sixteen months ago, President Obama stood in the well of Congress and issued a ringing call for a progressive vision of government. Working to persuade Members of Congress to adopt health care reform, he said that “large-heartedness…is part of the American character.  Our ability to stand in other people's shoes. A recognition that we are all in this together; that when fortune turns against one of us, others are there to lend a helping hand.” Many took comfort from that vision, the first avowedly affirmative one we had heard from a President about the government he leads in many a year. 

Since then, much of the President’s domestic agenda has been adopted, and a mid-term election “shellacking” has intervened. And now, President Obama, with the 2012 election drawing ever nearer, is embracing a far less generous vision. In an op-ed on the opinion pages …

Despite its strong condemnation of the industry-wide problems that caused last year’s BP Oil Spill, the report today from the President’s commission waivered on a crucial subject: it significantly embraced the essentially self-regulatory British "Safety Case" model of regulation that industry and its consultants have been promoting. So while the commission has done some terrific work, one of its key recommendations is very disturbing.  The safety case approach ultimately leaves to the oil companies, rather than regulators, the difficult but crucial work of making sure another rig does not explode. We can do better, if Congress gives the regulators adequate funding, moves them to an agency like the EPA or OSHA whose mission is to crack down on bad actors, and gives them the authority they need to make the oil industry internalize the American people’s expectation that it operate safely.

A number of …

Salmonella in eggs, peanuts, tomatoes, and spinach; and melamine in pet food and candy imported from China… With a regularity that has become downright terrifying, the food safety system in the United States has given us ample evidence that it has broken down completely. And so, in a small miracle of legislative activism, Democrats in Congress finally mustered the will and the votes to act, passing H.R. 2751 yesterday, not for the first time, but for the second time in the Senate and the third in the House. (A mistake on a technicality—Senate failure to follow an arcane procedure that allows everyone to pretend the bill it just passed originated in the House, where all tax legislation is required by the Constitution to begin its journey into law.)

Many people deserve credit for this December miracle, although my hat is especially doffed for Representatives John …

One of the most powerful sleights of hand achieved by Republicans during the last election cycle was their renewed declaration of war on regulation. It’s no secret which of their interest groups are most passionate about this aspect of their agenda. Tuesday's LATimes previewed a plan by the Chamber of Commerce, to be announced today, to further unleash its lobbying legions against regulations as soon as the new congress is anointed. But it's unlikely the Chamber will get too specific on which popular regulation it wants to kill, just as Republicans have neglected to specify which budgets will be cut. First build to a fever pitch and then—only at the last minute, mind you—admit the substance.

No surprise there. As the Chamber and John Boehner know all too well, dead regulations, just like specific budget cuts, inevitably generate mourners. West Virginia’s …

There’s a lot of punditry left to be committed about whether and how the GOP majority in the House and the enhanced GOP minority in the Senate will work with the Obama Administration. I’m not optimistic. But even if the President and House Republicans are able to find some small patch of common ground, the hard reality that progressives need to swallow is that whatever major progressive legislation will bear Barack Obama’s signature has already become law, at least for his first term.

The same is not true, however, for what Barack Obama might accomplish simply by infusing the health and safety  agencies in his Administration—from EPA to OSHA to FDA—with a sense of urgency, clearing away barriers to regulatory progress within his own White House, and insisting that the agencies enforce existing laws with newfound vigor. A string of catastrophes have …

Whatever happens at the polls this November, President Obama will get a chance to turn the electoral tide in 2012, perhaps without the loadstone of recession around his political neck.  And, while the economy and many other issues will continue to occupy the President for the best and most obvious of reasons, it’s fair for everyone in the country to expect him to multi-task. For progressives who care about the environment, I’d suggest one critical criterion for judging the Administration: Can the President and his senior appointees stop running from the bogus claims that they stand for big, bloated, ineffective government and instead explain to the American people why government makes a vital difference to our daily lives?

Just last week we got another distressing, preliminary answer to this crucial question when the Administration stiffly dismissed the preliminary findings of staff at the bipartisan National …

As expected, the Environmental Protect Agency issued its draft Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for the Chesapeake Bay this afternoon – essentially a cap on total pollution in the Bay, as well as caps on each of 92 separate segments of the Bay. EPA also issued assessments of each of the affected states’ Watershed Implementation Plans (WIPs), evaluating proposals for implementing the TMDL from Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia.

As I said in this space this morning, the TMDL is a major step forward. Reading through the draft reinforces my view that there’s good reason to hope that, decades from now, we’ll look back on the issuance of the TMDLs as a watershed moment in the protection of the Bay.  It’s been a very long road to this point, with a couple decades of false starts. And …

With more than 7,000 miles of coastline and thousands of stream and river miles and lake acres, the Chesapeake Bay is the crown jewel of the region’s natural resource heritage. And its value to the region's economy is immense--$1 trillion according to one frequently cited estimate.  But the ecological health of the Bay is tenuous.  Primary pollutants are nitrogen, phosphorous, and sediment. These nutrients have accumulated in the Bay to unsustainable levels, contributing to algal blooms and dead zones during the summer months.

For 20 years, a moveable feast of bureaucratic in-fighting known as the Chesapeake Bay Program* has bobbed and weaved, making pretend promises to the public and, for as long as they could get away with it, posing the Bay State governors at annual photo ops with their hair blowing in the wind and their eyes misting in response to their …

Today Jacob Lew heads to the hill for two Senate hearings on his nomination to be the new director of the White House's Office of Management and Budget. He is expected to be confirmed.

The hearings will likely focus on budgetary issues, but no less important is another division of OMB: the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), the office charged with coordinating regulatory policy. The policy context is this: from salmonella-laced eggs to the BP oil spill, we are in a year of regulatory disasters. No one agency or individual is responsible for the breakdown; the problems are pervasive and the fixes often not easy.

The OMB could be playing a positive role in supporting regulatory agencies and helping to stop the next crisis before it happens. Instead, it has too often busied itself meddling in agencies' processes, and rushing to stand up for …