OPINION:
Like so many who come to Washington to help govern, I believed the federal government was restricted by constitutional restraints on the breadth of its power over both the states and individual American citizens. A few days after my arrival in 1970, I discovered that Congress was holding hearings on whether the use of artificial grass, then called “AstroTurf,” by professional baseball and football teams should be banned.
That such hearings were considered legitimate rather than an outrage and a waste of time was a clue. Even then, few Washingtonians paid much attention to constitutional limits on their rights or powers. Like many sports fans, I was no fan of artificial grass but couldn’t see what led Washington policymakers to believe they had the power to ban the stuff. It dawned on me that if the feds believed they had the right to ban artificial grass, they probably believed they had the power to ban or regulate any activity or product they didn’t like.
Federal bureaucrats and elected officials have since justified that conclusion in hundreds of ways. Last month, the chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced at a “virtual” news conference sponsored by an amalgam of progressive public interest groups that the CPSC was seriously contemplating a ban on gas stoves for environmental and health reasons. Richard Trumka Jr., son of the former head of the AFL-CIO and a buddy of President Biden, told reporters that such a ban is “on the table,” bragging that a ban is “a powerful tool in our tool belt and it’s a real possibility here.”
Mr. Trumka is a regulator and banner from way back. He came out of the Maryland Attorney General’s Office. He spent time as a congressional staffer fighting to ban e-cigarettes. Still, it wasn’t until he was appointed head of the consumer agency that he discovered gas stoves represent an existential threat to the public.
His announcement was, as it turned out, a classic Washington “trial balloon,” and it was not well received by either those millions of Americans who prefer to “cook with gas” or those who still believe there are limits on the government’s inclination to meddle. The result was a firestorm of criticism from the right and the public.
Biden administration cheerleaders who had never considered gas stoves a threat quickly rallied around the idea led by people like Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, who have never encountered a regulation that troubles them. C.W. Cooke of the National Review angrily went back to discover that until rallying in support of Mr. Trumka, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had in 10 years on social media never mentioned gas stoves. Now she says gas stoves cause brain damage and suggests that the government could provide incentives through Mr. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act to subsidize their demise.
As Mr. Cooke and others began looking into Mr. Trumka’s charge that gas stoves represent a dangerous health hazard, it turned out that neither he nor those supporting him had bothered to compare the dangers posed by gas versus electric stoves. Still, luckily for the rest of us, someone else did. The National Fire Protection Association reported on home cooking fires in 2020. Homes with electric stoves were 2.6 times as likely to experience a stove-related fire, and families with electric ranges were 3.4 times as likely to die in such fires. Mr. Trumka must have missed the study’s conclusions, or he might have just as mindlessly decided to go after electric stoves.
Given the public reaction to the proposed ban, Mr. Trumka now says the CPSC was just kidding. He just wants to study the issue and will take public comments on the dangers posed by gas appliances, which has led his defenders to argue that those who opposed the ban were making a lot out of nothing.
The evidence suggests the opposite. Had there not been a public uproar, you can bet the CPSC would have gone ahead. After all, New York has announced a ban on gas stoves that will go into effect in 2030.
That’s what trial balloons are all about — to gauge the public reaction to a government edict that could prove unpopular. When Mr. Trumka discovered whether such a ban might or might not make cooking safer, the one person most likely to be burned if he went ahead would be him, and the White House announced gas stoves would not be banned, he walked back the proposal.
For now, at least Mr. Trumka and his merry band of regulators have “buggered off,” as Mr. Cooke suggested. But over the decades, government busybodies intent on micromanaging our lives of us all have come up with dozens of silly proposals. When new balloons are released, they should be shot down as quickly as this one.
• David Keene is editor-at-large at The Washington Times.
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