Regulatory Reform is a ''Now-Not-Later'' Necessity

by John Jay Ponce

When it comes to spraying chemical fertilizer on a field or to making the taxpayer pay needlessly, the "point source" doesn't lie.

The overburden of government taxes outrightly and we deplore it -- yet many of overtaxation's critics fail to realize the "point source" of government's "hidden" taxation.

Too much regulation.

President Clinton is counting on a general "green feeling" in America and its Congress with which to delay or outright cease a logical move to reform the runamuck regulatory process. Over-regulation of American businesses and homes has added a layer of unperceived "taxes" that bring little or no remedy to the problems it purports to combat. This past week Clinton sent top regulatory staffers to Congress to derail a coalition of Republicans and Democrats that seeks to kick some sense into runaway regulation.

The Clinton administration Friday sought to pour cold water on growing enthusiasm in Congress for broad reforms in the way the federal government writes its environmental, health and safety regulations.

Testifying to the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, a White House Office of Management and Budget official stressed that the administration did not see the need for comprehensive reform of such regulations.

Sally Katzen, administrator of OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, protested a number of problems with the bipartisan legislation that would set procedures for agencies to follow in order to impose regulations. The bill is being pushed by Committee Chairman Fred Thompson, the Tennessee Republican (and the Senate's lead snoop into the Administration's fund-raising ruses), and Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat (and committed to reinvigorating his state's heavily regulated auto manufacturing). The 1997 version of the bill is a reworking of a 1996 effort by then-Presidential candidate Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, and is somewhat weaker and conciliatory toward regulation -- but still aims to rein in the galloping regulatory costs of doing business in America.

"The administration believes, as do many members of Congress, that other models of regulatory reform may be more effective than enactment of additional comprehensive, one-size-fits-all, procedural requirements," Katzen told the committee.

Katzen also claimed the Thompson-Levin bill would impose new costs and time-consuming tasks on agencies, could hamstring innovative approaches, and could override existing laws, even though the Senators gave Ms. Katzen a look as if she believed they had just fallen off the turnip truck.

However, support for the bill has come from deep within the agency watchdog of federal matters, the General Accounting Office. The Thompson-Levin plan earned an endorsement from the GAO, which said it would "provide a statutory foundation for such principles as openness, accountability and sound science in rulemaking."

"Sound science in rulemaking," often referred to in regulation-knowledgeable circles as "scientific peer review," long has been sought by the natural resources industries of forestry, mining, grazing and agriculture, and now, in the pressure-cooker world of global manufacturing competition, is desired by America's major durable-goods industries.

At best, the Clinton Administration has promised yet another of its promises to let "studies" determine the future of controls on regulation. The White House has directed its agencies to make more use of measures such as studies comparing costs of regulations with benefits they yield and studies to assess the risks that regulations are meant to alleviate.

The problem there, say the bill's backers, is that even if all promises are kept, the "studies" will remain internalized memorandums from one White House regulator to another, sort of Post-It notes among friends, devoid of critical scrutiny by nongovernmental scientific investigators of the auto and farming industries, logging, strip and underground mining, beef and sheep ranching and hundreds of other intensely regulated fields.

So far, largely based on Administration poll-taking that asserts Americans near the year 2000 desiring ever more controls -- at any price -- the Clinton White House has fended off Congressional attempts to put tighter limits on agencies' ability to write rules, with the Administration arguing that consumer and environmental advocates say would muzzle regulators and give industries free rein to pollute or produce unsafe products.

Perhaps it is no fluke that Mr. Thompson, one-half of the regulatory reform tag team, is the Senator getting closest to the political fund-raising connections between the Clinton White House and all sorts of suspect donors -- including foreign industries that enjoy seeing the "environmental" card played in the U.S. in order to make their own resources and manufactures of more value.

To be expected, environmental-cause leaders -- steadfastly in the White House camp through the past two elections -- are quick to dismiss the current bill.

"...We believe, despite its principle authors' intent, that the bill would prevent government from acting to protect Americans against serious environmental, health and safety threats and would jeopardize existing legal safeguards that protect us today against such harms," David Hawkins, senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said.

But a group of industries called Alliance USA that is pushing for changes in federal rulemaking said the bill would result in more sensible and understandable rules.

"This is surely a prescription for smarter regulation and more effective congressional oversight," Thomas Walton, director of economic policy for General Motors Corp. and Alliance USA spokesman, told the committee.

Away from the marble halls of Congress and the White House, the American worker and consumer is echoing the call for smarter, more logical application of regulatory power.

Joanna Waugh, of Alliance for America and writing about regulatory reform, notes:

"If dialogue between regulators and the industries they regulate continues to be feared, Americans can expect little environmental improvement beyond current levels. They can also expect the price tag to go up. Right now, this nation spends $111 million to prevent one death from asbestos, and $92.1 billion to prevent one death from atrazine and alachlor in drinking water. Regulatory reform could mean lower prices and more money for wages that go to feed, clothe and house the people of this nation."

Waugh's particular expertise is in the field of application of pesticides and fertilizers to farm crops -- a "feely" subject if there ever was one. She cites verifiable statistics suggesting that agricultural chemical applications -- one of the most expensively regulated processes in the federal government's rulemaking arsenal -- cannot be the supermarket demons that pseudo-scientific government regulators have claimed them to be.

"Take the issue of pesticides and fertilizers," says Waugh. "Common sense says that if these chemicals are prime causes of cancer, death rates should be highest in agricultural states where their use is most prevalent (often called the "point source"). The national average for cancer is 172 deaths per 100,000 people. Washington, D.C.'s cancer death rate is 230 per 100,000. yet Iowa, a leading farm state, has a cancer death rate of 158 per 100,000."

She goes on to say that "claims that health and safety protections will suffer under...regulatory reform have fooled the public and caused unnecessary concern. The plain truth is -- taxpayers are likely to enjoy increased health and safety protections under proposed regulatory reforms."

The Clinton Administration's efforts to derail regulatory reform is based upon deflecting data and testimony from the "point source." Continuing with regulatory costs growing like weeds is overt ignorance of conditions at the "point source" -- and that is a lie.

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