THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 10, 1995 TAG: 9503080021
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines
Some government regulations have helped protect us from adulterated food, deadly drugs and dangerous products. Others have complicated lives, tied business in knots and accomplished little. Rational reform would aim at retaining the useful regulations and eliminating the failures.
Unfortunately, the Republican anti-regulation regulation passed by the House last week looks too clever by half. It would create an elaborate series of cost/benefit hoops that new regulations would have to leap through before becoming law.
That may sound good in theory, but in practice it could lead to a paperwork nightmare. A flowchart illustrating the needed steps bears a disquieting resemblance to the Rube Goldberg design of President Clinton's health-care plan.
New regulations would undergo an elaborate cost/benefit analysis, a formal peer review, a comparison of risks with similar activities. Alternatives for nongovernment solutions would be required, and federal agencies which failed to clear every hurdle could be sued in federal court. These measures will make it difficult to implement not just foolish regulations but the essential ones too. And there's the risk of increasing burdensome government bureaucracy rather than decreasing it.
Critics claim it's intentional. Republicans hope to create a system so complicated and confusing that it will collapse of its own weight or grind to a halt, a victim of inertia. That may be clever politics, but it is poor governance.
In order to eliminate needless regulations, this legislation would create a host of new rules regulating the regulatory process. In order to streamline government, government would be complicated. In order to cut red tape, more red tape would be created.
The result is likely to be just what reformers claim to abhor. More government paper and paper shufflers. More confusion for those who have to deal with government, the people reform is supposed to help. And a bonanza for lawyers. Not to mention the issue of cost. The Congressional Budget Office estimates this reform will cost an additional $250 million a year to administer.
If the goals are really to retain only needed regulation, to fund only the minimum necessary government overhead and to reduce onerous demands on citizens and businesses, there are better solutions. Reform the agencies that promulgate regulations. Pass sunset laws. Identify specific regulations that don't work and repeal them. The Republicans have identified a real sickness in the system, but this is not the cure. by CNB