A significant part of President Donald Trump's work is undoing the mistakes and excesses of the past administration and setting things right like the ObamaCare, as well as another last minute regulation Obama passed consistent with promoting his supposed ideal of political correctness but being anti-business in the process. Through the help of a Republican-dominated Congress, however, Trump is quite on track in correcting another Obama blunder.
The Senate voted Monday to repeal the last-minute regulation Obama imposed before leaving the White House in January- the one that would have mandated companies to report their past labor law violations or allegations before bidding for federal contracts.
Industry has been highly critical of the said Obama regulation, calling it the 'blacklisting rule'. Industry leaders and business owners and executives said it will allow federal agencies to blacklist companies from being able to bid on government contracts for alleged violations even before their guilt- or innocence as the case may be- is proven. The affected industry felt the regulation lacks due process, and translates to an overreach of state powers. Obama in pushing and supporting that was just pandering to liberal supposed political correctness.
Republicans also previously stressed that the said law is duplicative and unnecessary because the federal government as things stand already has a suspension and disbarment process in place.
A Texas federal district court judge blocked the rule from taking effect in October after trade group Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) filed for a temporary stay. The district court ruled in its preliminary injunction that treating non-adjudicated claims similarly with actual wrongdoing denies federal contractors their due process rights.
Using the Congressional Review Act the House voted 236-187 last month to pass a resolution to block the Obama regulation. And just this Monday, the Senate voted 49-48 to repeal as well the said last-minute blacklisting rule. Again, the Republican lawmakers made full use of the Congressional Review Act so that even if the 49 votes do not comprise a majority of the full Senate, they were a majority of those present, and were already enough to pass it.
And now it only needs the signature of President Trump to overturn the Obama moonlight regulation, and companies can heave a sigh of relief as they would no longer be forced to report any labor-law violation or allegation they have incurred over the past three years while bidding for federal contracts worth more than $500,000. The regulation's earlier opponents can also rejoice with the fact that small companies can no longer be prevented from competing to win federal contracts.
The ABC group previously thanked the House for protecting contractors and taxpayers with its vote. It also said that ABC supports policies that increase fairness and competition in government contracting and that they look forward to working with the Trump administration, as well as Congress, to pursue commonsense policies that will hold bad actors accountable while attracting the best companies and trained workforce to help rebuild America consistent with Trump's make America great again goal.
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