Bush and AIDS Drugs Executive Order

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Asia Russell asia@CritPath.Org
Tue, 23 Jan 2001 14:03:56 -0500 (EST)

here is the text of the Bloomberg wire story that ran in the Pittsburgh

Post Gazette yesterday

Asia Russell

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HEADLINE: BUSH PRESSURED ON ISSUING ORDERS CONSERVATIVE GROUPS WANT HIM TO

REVERSE CLINTON'S ACTIONS 

BYLINE: HOLLY ROSENKRANTZ, BLOOMBERG NEWS 

George W. Bush may help AIDS drug manufacturers GlaxoSmithKline PLC, hurt

RU-486 "abortion pill"

sponsor Danco Group, and make it easier for smaller construction bidders

like Custom Comforts USA

Inc. to avoid union labor -- all with a stroke of his pen in his first

weeks as U.S. president. 

Business lobbyists and conservative groups are pressing Bush to issue

executive orders to reverse

many of President Bill Clinton's actions soon after Bush takes office this

weekend. Such orders, which

don't need approval by Congress, apply to a narrow range of federal

policies -- not to agency regulations

such as a new ergonomics standard to protect workers from repetitive

motion injuries. Those types of

rules can be changed only after hearings and public comment periods. 

The Bush team is "compiling a list and making calls" to see which orders

ought to be changed as part of

Bush's drive to cut government regulation, said Susan Eckerly, a lobbyist

for the National Federation of

Independent Businesses. "I think we could see action on them in the first

month or two," she said. 

Among current orders that various groups want to reverse: 

Clinton's order last summer allowing African countries to import generic

versions of AIDS drugs, which

Glaxo, the world's largest producer of AIDS drugs, along with Merck & Co.,

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.

and Roche Holdings AG said changed the way their drugs are priced. 

Other issues 

* A Clinton action from the first days of his presidency that allowed the

abortion drug RU-486 to enter the

U.S. 

* A Clinton order that forces non-union construction companies to enter

into labor agreements in order to

work on federal construction sites. Some companies such as Adena Corp. and

Hess Mechanical, a unit

of Custom Comforts, are part of a coalition seeking to have the policy

reversed. 

"It's going to be a lot harder than people think" for Bush to reverse many

of Clinton's orders because

they're worded as guidance to agencies, said Tim Maney, director of

congressional public affairs for the

U.S. Chamber of Commerce. 

"Many of Clinton's executive orders are in the labor and environmental

arena, and Bush is not going to

win any public relations awards by attacking them right away," Maney said. 

Two days into his presidency in 1993, Clinton signed a presidential

memorandum overturning a ban on

public funds for groups such as Planned Parenthood that perform or provide

abortion advice overseas.

That looks like one of Bush's first targets. 

"Organizations that promote abortions are organizations that I don't want

to support with taxpayer

money," Bush told the New York Times in an interview published Sunday.

Abortion rights groups expect

Bush to take action in his first month, said Loretta Kane, a spokeswoman

for the National Organization

for Women. 

Anti-abortion activists have asked Bush to prohibit the import of RU-486,

which Clinton made legal

through an executive order that reversed a ban by his predecessor. They

also seek reversal of Clinton

orders that allowed facilities at military hospitals to perform abortions

and allowed federal funding of

research that uses stem cell tissue from aborted fetuses. 

Bush does "not have to wait for Congress to act to begin to fulfill" his

"pledge to protect the lives of

unborn children," the Christian Defense Coalition and Generation Life

wrote Bush. 

The Food and Drug Administration has since approved RU-486 and Congress

has taken action on

military hospitals, making it hard to turn back the clock, said Douglas

Johnson, legislative director of the

National Right to Life Committee. 

Two of Clinton's orders that pleased organized labor are under scrutiny.

At the start of his presidency,

Clinton canceled the policy of Bush's father, President George Bush, that

required unions to post notices

detailing workers' right to withhold the portion of union dues used for

political purposes. George W. Bush

has made restricting unions' political spending a tenet of his approach to

campaign finance reform. 

Bush officials have also been looking at a Clinton order encouraging union

labor to be used on federal

construction sites. 

Timber, mining and oil companies have denounced as "land grabs" Clinton's

orders that made federal

lands off-limits for mining, drilling and logging. 

Rescinding those orders would create such anger from Democrats and

environmental groups that it

would damage Bush's attempts to encourage bipartisanship, said Jay

Cochran, a research fellow at the

Mercatus Center, a regulatory studies program at George Mason University

in Virginia. 

No president has reversed a designation of a national monument. "Bush

could do it legally, but it would

be a very risky move politically," said the Chamber of Commerce's Maney. 

Industries angered by those orders are confident that Gale Norton, Bush's

nominee for interior secretary,

will protect their interests, Maney said. Norton and Bush support oil

drilling in Alaska's Arctic National

Wildlife Refuge, for instance. 

The Mercatus Center found that in the last three months of his presidency,

Clinton published more than

20,835 pages of executive orders, rules, regulations and presidential

memorandums in the Federal

Register, which records government actions. 

That's in line with his predecessors, the study said. George Bush added

20,148 pages in his last three

months, Ronald Reagan 14,448 pages and Jimmy Carter 24,531 pages. 

LOAD-DATE: January 22, 2001 

Bush and AIDS drugs