Not to make it political, but the whole point of a lot of what any politician does is to get reelected. In the US, with our awful voting system, that means pandering to the base.
Whether or not something is beneficial is largely irrelevant to politics. What matters is public perception. You can create a strawman from just about anything, if you can get media to carry it, since the majority of people get their news from only one or two sources.
You pass a law claiming to fix the problem you've imagined up for them, and they reelect you, because when the media comes in to check on things, the problem isn't there after the law is passed. They fix that stunning fact up with a little politicizing and a dash of spin, and the implication is that the law solved the problem. And most people will accept that, so long as it's coming from a news source they trust, or at least agrees with their preconceptions.
I really don't care enough to look, since I can't exert any influence over the representatives, but my bet would be that either the architect or a key supporter is up for reelection here in a bit, and had an in with the media.
