In retrospect, it was a premonition of the Obama era: Late in 2007, Congress banned incandescent lightbulbs, by a vote of 86 to eight in the Senate and 314 to 100 in the House. President Bush signed the bill in his late, get-me-back-to-Texas phase. Let's hope it's a better premonition that Congress may now be having second thoughts.

Last month, Republicans Joe Barton, Michael Burgess and Marsha Blackburn introduced a two-page bill that would repeal the efficiency standards that were included in the 2007 energy bill and designed to phase out the conventional Edison-style bulb by 2014. The replacements are supposed to be compact fluorescents, those corkscrew tubes.

To hear the greens tell it, compact fluorescents will reduce both household electricity bills and the U.S. carbon footprint; therefore the government needs to mandate the type of bulbs that adults are allowed to buy. By this reasoning, people switched to petroleum from whale oil in the 19th century not because it was a cheaper and more useful product, but because Congress banned whales.

The frequently invoked, less frequently consulted American public hasn't responded as the planners, well, planned. Some 89% of the residential market continues to be dominated by normal bulbs, according to the Energy Department. One reason may be that consumers prefer the incandescent style of lighting. Another may be that fluorescents cost at retail 10 times more than the ordinary bulbs that continue to work perfectly well.

The repeal bill doesn't have much political momentum to date. Still, Democrats and their union allies did take note of the news that GE is shuttering the last remaining lightbulb factory in the country, in Winchester, Virginia. So much for green jobs reviving American manufacturing.

A further thought that ought to be giving Democrats night sweats, but probably isn't, is that the lightbulb ban has become a symbol of the nanny statism that has gone into overdrive in the last two years. It reminds us of the 55 mile per hour federal speed limit, which was imposed in 1974 amid the Arab oil embargo as an efficiency measure. The despised double nickel didn't get taken off the books until 1994's populist wave for smaller government.

Another wave is building this year, and not merely because Congress has weighed in on everything from how you should finance your mortgage and college loans to the health insurance plan that you must by law buy for your own alleged good. Congress has also become the uninvited guest at the dinner party who won't shut up about how you illuminate your home.


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