Yesterday morning, the Labor Department announced the unemployment rate had ticked up to 9.8%. We are all aware that all Americans face a significant tax increase on January 1 if extensions of the current tax rates aren’t passed. Gays are still barred from serving openly in the military despite a DoD report that confirms that military readiness will not suffer if the bar is repealed. With such significant legislation pending in the lame duck session, it’s hard to figure out what’s the most important and should be done first. Right?
Wrong. If you’re a Democrat in the House of Representatives, you know that the most important thing that needs to pass is more regulation. On Thursday, the House passed the “CALM” Act, the cutely named Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act. What does it do? Well, it bars television networks and cable providers from adjusting the volume of commercials to louder levels than the main programming.
I am not making this up.
Apparently, it is more important for Congress to pass more regulation on private industry than it is to ensure our taxes don’t go up, deal with unemployment and turn the economy around. It’s even more important, apparently, than allowing gay service members to serve openly. And people think John Kyl is being unreasonable when he says we can’t get the START Treaty ratified in the lame duck? When Congress is wasting time on non-priorities like this, why does anyone expect something legitimate to get done?
I also have a problem with the legislation itself. The last thing we need is more regulations – especially on trivial nonsense like this. People actually believe it is such a serious problem that some commercials are louder than the TV shows that they feel it necessary to lobby Congress to get a law passed to outlaw the practice. Seriously? Is there a TV in America manufactured in the last twenty years that doesn’t have a mute button on the remote control? Are there members of Congress who honestly believe that it’s better to pass a law than tell people to press mute? Besides, in these modern days of DVRs, TIVO, Netflix, On Demand, Youtube and Hulu, how many people are actually watching live TV where they aren’t fast-forwarding through the commercials anyway?
The other issue here is that this law will have an impact on advertisers. This will actually cost them money. The louder commercials aren’t done by accident – it’s a calculated thing, designed to help grab peoples attention and ensure that advertising reaches peoples ears when they get up to go to the kitchen or the bathroom during the break. You can charge a little extra to pump up the volume and advertisers will pay it. Now that revenue is lost, all because Congress thinks the American people are too stupid to push mute. Another way Congress is over-regulating and making it harder for business to do business in the middle of this economic downturn.
The bill passed on a voice vote, so I can’t take a shot at any specific Republicans for supporting it, but I can chastise the Democrats for allowing the bill any floor time. The CALM Act is a clear example of why the Democrats lost control of the House – instead of handling legitimate problems, they would rather play nanny state and pass more regulation than focusing on jobs and the economy.
