WASHINGTON — As the hour grows late, President Bush, like many chief executives before him, seems to hear the call of the wild.
Honoring a tradition that dates at least to the Reagan administration, Bush is pushing through a bundle of controversial last-minute changes in federal rules -- many of them involving the environment, national parks and public lands in the West.
President Clinton used his final weeks and months in office to strengthen a host of environmental rules and lock up federal lands with wilderness and other protective designations. Bush is using the same window of opportunity to open wilderness for oil and gas drilling, and to loosen safeguards for air, water and wildlife.
In recent days, the Bush administration announced new rules to speed oil shale development across 2 million rocky acres in the West. It scheduled an auction for drilling rights alongside three national parks. It has also set in motion processes to finalize major changes in endangered species protection, allow more mining waste to flow into rivers and streams, and exempt factory farms from air pollution reporting.
Researchers who track "midnight regulations" say Bush pushed 53 of them through the federal Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the last three weeks, nearly double the pace of Clinton at this point in his final year.
Some of the most controversial rules deal with the environment -- a legacy-cementing area where Bush diverges sharply from Clinton and from President-elect Barack Obama.
In the mid-1990s, when Clinton was in the White House, the GOP-controlled Congress established rules designed to rein in late-inning regulatory changes. But the move has had little effect.
Outgoing presidents "have an incentive to push stuff that the next administration won't be in favor of," said Veronique de Rugy, a senior fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University who tracks midnight regulations. "It's your last chance . . . to extend your influence into the future."
White House officials say they've taken pains to avoid a late-term blitz. Spokesman Tony Fratto said that Bush is keeping roughly the same regulatory pace as last year, and that many rules won't be enacted because agencies missed a Nov. 1 deadline for final action, set earlier this year by Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten. Bolten's order allows exceptions for what are considered extraordinary circumstances.
