President Obama has spent the past week trying to convince everyone that the Gulf oil spill is the first thing on his mind every morning when he wakes up. The problem is that if this is the first thing on his mind now—what will be the first thing on his mind next week? What will be his next brainwave about a problem that he absolutely must fix by issuing more presidential orders? That's the problem with a president who thinks there is nothing outside his domain of oversight and authority.
Here's one example. Under pressure from the unions, the administration has been threatening to crack down on unpaid college internships, subjecting them to minimum wage regulations and other controls which—rather than improving the internships—would probably make them illegal and economically unfeasible.
"Rules Push on Interns Worries College Chiefs," David R. Sands, Washington Times, May 30
A group of university presidents and lawmakers on Capitol Hill are expressing alarm over what they fear could be a coming crackdown by the Obama administration Labor Department on popular student internship programs.
The Labor Department insists it has no plans to change the long-standing regulations on internships, but many educators and college officials say they fear a new regulatory push by the federal government and by a number of states will lead employers to simply drop their internship programs, seen by generations of college students and recent graduates as a key steppingstone into the work force….
"We all agree there should be guidelines, and we haven't seen any signs of abuse, so there's a real sense of 'Where did this come from?'," Mr. Maxwell said in an interview….
The Labor Department's Wage and Hour Division in April put out a "fact sheet" for employers on standards for intern programs, noting that private, for-profit companies must pay interns the minimum wage and overtime benefits if the internships do not meet basic criteria on training, oversight and work tasks.
The criteria are not new…. But the release of the fact sheet—and fears that the old rules would be enforced with new zeal by the Obama administration—have set off alarm bells that a crackdown is in the works.
Nancy J. Leppink, deputy administrator of the Wage and Hour Division, told the New York Times last month, "If you're a for-profit employer or you want to pursue an internship with a for-profit employer, there aren't going to be many circumstances where you can have an internship and not be paid and still be in compliance with the law."
