GOP can't turn off lightbulb standards

WASHINGTON -- House Republicans failed Tuesday to stop the enactment of new energy-saving standards for lightbulbs they portrayed as yet another example of big government interfering in people's lives.

The GOP bill to overturn the standards set to go into effect next year fell short of the two-thirds majority needed for passage. The vote was 233-193.

For many Republicans, those newfangled curly fluorescent lightbulbs were the last straw, pushed by an overreaching government. Their legislation would have kept the marketplace clear for the cheaper, energy-wasting bulbs that have changed little since Thomas Edison invented them in 1879.

The standards in question do not specifically ban the old bulbs but require a higher level of efficiency. Four of Edison's descendants said the inventor would be mortified to see politicians trying to get the nation to hang on to outdated technology.

The standards had not been contentious before now. They were crafted in 2007 with Republican participation and signed into law by President George W. Bush.

But now they have become a symbol of a much larger divide in Washington over the size and reach of government itself. The new bulbs suggest to some conservatives that big government is running amok.

Republican presidential contender Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota complained earlier this year that, under President Barack Obama, "we bought a bureaucracy that now tells us which lightbulbs to buy."

Statements from Edison's kin included grand-newphew Robert Wheeler's: "The technology changes. Embrace it." -- AP