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NAMF notebook
How (Not) To Cut Red Tape
For Washington’s newly dominant Republicans, the second hundred days have been less triumphant than the first. Much of the “Contract with America”-Newt Gingrich’s agenda of reforms-flew through the House of Representatives. Since then, bits have been falling to earth. A balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution died in the Senate; a line-item veto, which would let the president kill particular bits of spending in large money bills, is withering (as we write) in limbo. Although the latter was a good idea, the former was a bad one: no net loss. But now, much more important, welfare reform is jeopardized by Republican squabbling and states’bickering. And another key bit of the Republican reform agenda-broad-gauge regulatory reform-may have collapsed in the Senate. Ever since the Sherman antitrust act of 1890, America’s Congress has piled regulatory law on top of law with little concern to removeoutmoded bits or to see that the thousands of disparate parts added up to a coherent whole. The result is a fantastically dense tangle of regulation that is in desperate need of sorting out. Many provisions are simply dysfunctional: one example is the “Superfund’ toxic-waste clean-up law, which does little except create jobs for lawyers. Other vast piles of regulation-for instance, the rules covering banking and telecomswere once sensible, but are now decades out of date. Still other regulations, including many environmental and workplace safety rules, undercut their own worthy goals by using methods that are unduly clumsy, expensive, or intrusive. To ensure the safety of American workers, it is not necessary to specify the height of railings throughout the country. METAL FINISHING
??
OCTOBER 1995
No one of serious mind believes that government should get out of the regulatory business entirely. On the other hand, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to see that Congress’ traditional cost-no-object coherence-noconcern approach is collapsing of its own weight. How can we begin to unravel the mess? There are two ways: wholesale and retail. The Republicans’ wholesale approach applies to regulations en masse. It demands that federal agencies subject most new rules and many old ones to a battery of procedural checks: notably cost-benefit tests and court appeals. The House passed such a bill in arch as its antiregulatory showpiece. The Republican leader of the Senate, Bob Dole, was determined to follow suit-the better to give his presidential campaign a government-taming spin. But the Democrats threw up a wall of opposition and, after failing three times to break through, an embarrassed Mr. Dole declared defeat. In truth, his loss had more to do with antiregulatory symbolism than with real reform. The principle that regulations should justify their costs is a good one, and the Republicans’ desire to extend and entrench it is laudable. But bureaucratic cost-benefit analysis has been a staple of America’s regulatory regime since the Ford and Carter days; though it may help bureaucrats avoid error, it does nothing to make sense of the laws they must enforce. The real work of regulatory reform depends on retail reform, a job Congress has yet to properly face. William Niskanen, an economist with the Cato Institute in Washington, argues that serious regulatory reform means “changing the guts of existing regulations”; which, in practice, means rewriting countless old laws. He is right. Old-fashioned “command and control” rules, specifying in minute detail how businesses should make themselves cleaner or safer, need to be replaced with laws that set goals and let companies, and markets, find the cheapest way to reach them. Depression-era laws that restrict competition in banking, telecoms, agriculture, and other sectors need to be scrapped. How, today, can anyone justify old laws in today’s realities? Mr. Dole’s defeat may do some good, if it casts the new Congress back upon the job of retail reform. Start with
banking and telecoms deregulation, both of which are long overdue and are currently battling through Congress for the umpteenth time (and scrap the Senate’s attempt to regulate the Internet censoriously). Then pass a farm bill that lets supply and demand, rather than subsidies and production limits, shape American agriculture. Then let market forces blow a fresh breeze through Superfund and the air and water pollution laws. A few such deregulatory hits would be worth a mountain of cost-benefit studies.
MEf!!LX Contract With America no
Cyanides
no EDTAs no Fumes #O
Electricity
no Hazardous
Formulas
METALXB-9 STRIPPERSsafely remove
nickel with (I simple,
one-component immersion
Five tailored recycled brass,
powdered process.
formulations
steel, aluminum,
for copper,
silver, gold, or zinc diecast
that work quickly or embrittle
B-9 Strippers packages
and won’t etch
your substrate.
And
ship in convienient for all size shops.
Set an example
for Congress.
Use B-9 Strippers.
METALX A
Route
10, Box 683
Lenoir,
NC
28645
l-704-758-4997 Fax I-704-758-5033 Approvedjv M~litay &Amspoce Appi~cmmnr &_Specs
Circle 050 on reader inbmmtion card
101
For Washington’s newly dominant Republicans, the second hundred days have been less triumphant than the first. Much of the “Contract with America”-Newt Gingrich’s agenda of reforms-flew through the House of Representatives. Since then, bits have been falling to earth. A balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution died in the Senate; a line-item veto, which would let the president kill particular bits of spending in large money bills, is withering (as we write) in limbo. Although the latter was a good idea, the former was a bad one: no net loss. But now, much more important, welfare reform is jeopardized by Republican squabbling and states’bickering. And another key bit of the Republican reform agenda-broad-gauge regulatory reform-may have collapsed in the Senate. Ever since the Sherman antitrust act of 1890, America’s Congress has piled regulatory law on top of law with little concern to removeoutmoded bits or to see that the thousands of disparate parts added up to a coherent whole. The result is a fantastically dense tangle of regulation that is in desperate need of sorting out. Many provisions are simply dysfunctional: one example is the “Superfund’ toxic-waste clean-up law, which does little except create jobs for lawyers. Other vast piles of regulation-for instance, the rules covering banking and telecomswere once sensible, but are now decades out of date. Still other regulations, including many environmental and workplace safety rules, undercut their own worthy goals by using methods that are unduly clumsy, expensive, or intrusive. To ensure the safety of American workers, it is not necessary to specify the height of railings throughout the country. METAL FINISHING
??
OCTOBER 1995
No one of serious mind believes that government should get out of the regulatory business entirely. On the other hand, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to see that Congress’ traditional cost-no-object coherence-noconcern approach is collapsing of its own weight. How can we begin to unravel the mess? There are two ways: wholesale and retail. The Republicans’ wholesale approach applies to regulations en masse. It demands that federal agencies subject most new rules and many old ones to a battery of procedural checks: notably cost-benefit tests and court appeals. The House passed such a bill in arch as its antiregulatory showpiece. The Republican leader of the Senate, Bob Dole, was determined to follow suit-the better to give his presidential campaign a government-taming spin. But the Democrats threw up a wall of opposition and, after failing three times to break through, an embarrassed Mr. Dole declared defeat. In truth, his loss had more to do with antiregulatory symbolism than with real reform. The principle that regulations should justify their costs is a good one, and the Republicans’ desire to extend and entrench it is laudable. But bureaucratic cost-benefit analysis has been a staple of America’s regulatory regime since the Ford and Carter days; though it may help bureaucrats avoid error, it does nothing to make sense of the laws they must enforce. The real work of regulatory reform depends on retail reform, a job Congress has yet to properly face. William Niskanen, an economist with the Cato Institute in Washington, argues that serious regulatory reform means “changing the guts of existing regulations”; which, in practice, means rewriting countless old laws. He is right. Old-fashioned “command and control” rules, specifying in minute detail how businesses should make themselves cleaner or safer, need to be replaced with laws that set goals and let companies, and markets, find the cheapest way to reach them. Depression-era laws that restrict competition in banking, telecoms, agriculture, and other sectors need to be scrapped. How, today, can anyone justify old laws in today’s realities? Mr. Dole’s defeat may do some good, if it casts the new Congress back upon the job of retail reform. Start with
banking and telecoms deregulation, both of which are long overdue and are currently battling through Congress for the umpteenth time (and scrap the Senate’s attempt to regulate the Internet censoriously). Then pass a farm bill that lets supply and demand, rather than subsidies and production limits, shape American agriculture. Then let market forces blow a fresh breeze through Superfund and the air and water pollution laws. A few such deregulatory hits would be worth a mountain of cost-benefit studies.
MEf!!LX Contract With America no
Cyanides
no EDTAs no Fumes #O
Electricity
no Hazardous
Formulas
METALXB-9 STRIPPERSsafely remove
nickel with (I simple,
one-component immersion
Five tailored recycled brass,
powdered process.
formulations
steel, aluminum,
for copper,
silver, gold, or zinc diecast
that work quickly or embrittle
B-9 Strippers packages
and won’t etch
your substrate.
And
ship in convienient for all size shops.
Set an example
for Congress.
Use B-9 Strippers.
METALX A
Route
10, Box 683
Lenoir,
NC
28645
l-704-758-4997 Fax I-704-758-5033 Approvedjv M~litay &Amspoce Appi~cmmnr &_Specs
Circle 050 on reader inbmmtion card
101