A Gift of Christmas Light

Buried in the thousand or so pages of the much-debated and much-delayed compromise spending bill was a small Christmas gift for most of us. The House passed the bill last Thursday, while the Senate voted favorably on Saturday. As the bill currently stands, the upcoming ban on good old-fashioned incandescent lights was overturned. The President is expected to sign the bill after bellyaching about it for awhile.

It seems that the light bulb will not be one of the points of contention when the next last-minute "government shutdown" spending bill comes up. It also seems that even a lot of Democrats hate that ghastly pall cast by the compact fluorescent bulbs, and few of them want to call a hazmat team if somebody drops one of the ugly little buggers.

Some of the newer conservative House members objected that the bill only funds the government through the end of the fiscal year, thereby once again kicking the budget can down the road. But at least that's one unnecessary crisis averted until September 30 of 2012. The Republicans gave up many of their proposed restrictions on government regulation and policy, but wouldn't budge on the light bulbs.

Not only is the ban on incandescents little more than ill thought-out green weenie nonsense, but its deeper meaning is another bureaucratic nanny-state interference with the market and the personal choices of millions upon millions of Americans. Although the issue wasn't as big and obvious as cap 'n tax and other leftist bureaucratic schemes, the issue of what kind of light bulb the American consumer should buy became a freedom of choice issue that doesn't involve taking an innocent human life.

Pro-incandescent bulb advocate Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) led the original charge to end the ban with specific legislation. But his bill was defeated when it went to the Senate through parliamentary stalling by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid D-La La Land). Burgess has vowed that he will hold his troops together to retain the provision in any future Congressional action.

In order to be added as a rider to the bill firming up the spending budget, the bulb provision does not actually amend the 2007 law banning incandescents which was scheduled to occur in increments starting with 100 watt bulbs and eventually extending to all incandescents. What it does is effectively the same thing, only with an additional slap at the eco-wackos. The new provision prohibits the administration from spending a single dime on enforcing or in any manner carrying out the idiotic standards. Your house can now remain free of lightbulb mercury poisoning a little longer.

It's a shame the Republicans had to use trickery to get a common sense bill past the ecofreaks in the Senate. And in this case, it happened largely because the administration was getting heat about the Democratic Senate failing to act on the year-end spending bill which had not so long ago seemed to be hopelessly deadlocked. The Republicans had also attempted to add riders to cut back the administration's nuclear waste policy, "family planning" policy and environmental policy, but for multiple reasons (most of them good and logical) decided to defer those actions for a later time.