One of the many ways that you can discern how unserious Washington is about strong oversight and enforcement of big business is through the spectacle of “advisory committees.” Many federal agencies rely on these assemblies of experts to review policies and formulate recommendations. But the committees can also become an enhanced form of lobbying, where industry participants with a direct motive to loosen regulatory reins get a direct line to policymakers.

That’s exactly what’s going on with a long-delayed rule by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), designed to curb runaway speculation in oil, gas, and other energy markets. The CFTC’s Energy and Environmental Markets Advisory Committee recommended Wednesday that the agency abandon the so-called “position limits” rule. But the members of the committee almost all come from companies and trade groups that would stand to profit if the CFTC followed their advice.

“It is no surprise that a skulk of foxes has decided that chicken is delicious,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown in a statement. “What is surprising is that the CFTC would create a committee designed to undermine the law it’s charged with enforcing.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren called the report “little more than a list of talking points for an industry that hopes to escape meaningful regulation.” And Hillary Clinton, through her campaign’s chief financial officer Gary Gensler (himself a former head of the CFTC), said that she “rejects these recommendations,” adding that the rules “are a critical tool in curbing excessive speculation and protecting the integrity of markets.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act required the CFTC to establish limits on the amount of futures contracts that speculators could hold in any one commodity. Many blame excessive speculation for the spike in oil prices in 2008, when it moved from $60 to $147 a barrel in the space of a year. Even Saudi officials say speculation added up to $40 a barrel to the price at the height of the bubble.

The CFTC finalized the position limits rule in 2011, one that senators Bernie Sanders and Maria Cantwell derided as too weak. Nonetheless, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association and other trade groups sued CFTC to block the rule, enlisting Eugene Scalia, the late Supreme Court justice’s son, as lead counsel. And they succeeded in getting the rule tossed out.