Slash and Burn?

The regulatory revolt takes the Hill.

Rick Henderson from the May 1995 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

Dole, once called "a tax collector for the welfare state" by Newt Gingrich, seems an unlikely advocate for smashing the regulatory state. But he is running for president, and he certainly knows how to follow public opinion. Dole's chief rival for the Republican nomination, Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, has staked out hard-line positions against affirmative action and federal spending, and for enhancing the rights of business, property, and gun owners. And Capitol Hill insiders claim Dole won't let himself be outflanked by anyone.

Dole has appointed his own Regulatory Relief Task Force, led by Sens. Kay Hutchison (Tex.) and Christopher Bond (Mo.). The task force issued its own "Top 10" list of worst regulations, led by the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, wetlands laws, and OSHA. Notably absent from the list, however, are three recent regulatory extensions: the 1991 civil rights bill, the ADA, and the family-leave act. "There is no conceptual justification for giving a free ride to the so-called civil-rights laws," says Murray Weidenbaum, chairman of the Center of the Study of the American Business and one of the principal architects of deregulation in the Reagan administration.

Weidenbaum is especially critical of federal enforcement of the ADA. "To require [businesses to construct] expensive facilities that are almost never used," he says, shows that "the aim [of the regulation] is to maximize the cost to punish those of us who aren't disabled." Dole, however, has been a major supporter of the ADA, a role he has yet to reconcile with his new persona as scourge of the regulatory state.

Although Dole's bill would subject some existing regulations to cost-benefit analyses, a bipartisan group of more-radical House members want to go further: They would force every federal regulation to undergo review each seven years. Any regulation that couldn't be justified by the executive branch or Congress would be eliminated.

The bill, sponsored by Reps. Jim Chapman (D- Tex.), Mica, and Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), would require each agency to appoint a person to oversee the regulatory review. The agency would have seven years to list the regulations it enforces. For each regulation, the agency would have to recommend leaving the rule in place, modifying it (proposing suggested changes in the Federal Register), or eliminating it. This report would go simultaneously to the Office of Internal Regulatory Administration at the Office of Management and Budget and to Capitol Hill. Congress could ultimately modify or eliminate rules the executive branch wanted to keep. New regulations would face sunsetting within three years.

At a Capitol Hill press conference introducing the bill, Chapman was asked if he actually expected the bill would pass. He replied that anyone who opposes the idea of sunsetting regulations is in the position of defending the most bizarre laws on the books. Two he cited: The Americans with Disabilities Act requires automatic- teller machines at drive- through windows to be accessible to the blind. And, to comply with U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations, butchers must keep their floors wet; to comply with OSHA, however, the floors must be dry. "The notion that you should write [a regulation] and forget it," he said, "is simply nonsense."

If the regulatory revolt continues to simmer as different versions of the same bill pass the House and the Senate, the bill that reduces regulations more may be the version that emerges for a final vote. And Congress could even combine the toughest provisions from both houses into the final bill.

Consider property rights. The Senate bill introduced by Gramm would allow property owners to sue for compensation when federal regulations reduce the value of their land by 25 percent or $10,000, whichever is less.

The House takings bill has a 20-percent threshold and no dollar alternative. But it lets landowners file for compensation through an administrative procedure rather than by going to court, a prospect that's too costly for many small landowners. Peggy Riegle, whose Fairness to Landowners Committee represents more than 16,000 "mom and pop" property owners, says her members will push for any final bill to have an absolute-dollar threshold and the administrative-procedure provision.

Such proposals won't succeed without a struggle. As the House began to debate the moratorium on February 21, Bill Clinton responded with his mantra: "We want leaner government, not meaner government." He gave his cabinet agencies four months to list unnecessary regulations that could be pared back but stated his unequivocal opposition to any sort of moratorium. As with his "reinventing government" initiative, the president intends to make government more efficient rather than less intrusive.

And it's clear that Clinton intends to reduce the burdens on bureaucrats rather than on business or landowners. At the February 21 press conference, the president crowed about reducing the forms local school districts have to fill out to qualify for federal school lunches, eliminating the federal government's 10,000-page personnel manual, and "slash[ing] the small- business loan form from an inch thick to a single page."

Clinton responded to the proposed moratorium by asking federal agencies to push "horror" stories citing the alleged harms a regulatory "time out" would cause. The moratorium would, for instance, prevent the Consumer Product Safety Commission from forcing a redesign of five-gallon buckets to prevent children from drowning in them; it would stop the Department of Transportation from requiring airline first-aid kits to include latex gloves; and it would keep the Agriculture Department from determining when grocery-store chickens could be labeled "frozen" or "fresh."

The Clintonites presented their list. The public yawned. The republic should survive such threats.

"Last November, the American people sent us a message: Rein in big government," said Dole when he introduced his bill. "Stop micromanaging our lives through burdensome and costly regulations." The Kahles, and thousands of other business and landowners, hope the Republican Congress can back up its tough rhetoric with substantive action.

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