The Obama administration’s refusal to waive the Jones Act (a nasty bit of protectionist legislation that forbids foreign-flagged ships from operating near the U.S. coast) is looking increasingly like an ill-advised sop to organized labor. Deroy Murdock had a good column about this for us last week, and Keith Hennessey has provided a great explication of all the ins and outs of waiving the act (and why organized labor is so dead set against any waivers). Hennessey was in charge of the process by which the Bush administration issued Jones Act waivers during Katrina and Rita, and he recently described the kind of pressure that big labor can bring to bear:

• Industry lobbied against the waivers. They lobbied for shorter timeframes, and for narrower scopes. Once the waivers were granted, they pressured Customs and Border Patrol on enforcement.
• They lobbied at all levels, including trying to make their case to me. They were most effective pushing on the Cabinet and sub-Cabinet.
• Even some Cabinet officials in a Republican Administration were affected by the political pressure brought to bear by the industry.

Now a group of GOP senators is attempting an end run around the White House’s obstinacy with a bit of legislation that would waive the act in order to allow foreign-flagged oil skimmers to help with the Deepwater Horizon clean-up. It’s a little surreal to think that an administration reeling from the perception that it hasn’t done everything it can to deal with the spill would let its allegiance to big labor prevail in this case, but that’s what appears to be happening.