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Regulatory Fever Returns
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18139 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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11 / 1990 |
3,069 Words |
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Murray Weidenbaum
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The most casual observer of the Washington scene can spot the current upturn in federal regulation of private economic activity. Congressional action on new and more burdensome regulation is proceeding at a feverish pace. A comprehensive revision and expansion of the Clean Air Act may soon be passed by Congress and sent to the While House. Simultaneously, Congress is taking action on proposed laws to reverse Super Court rulings on affirmative action (and much more), and to mandate employee leave for personal and family illness. Each of these expansions of regulation will increase, often unnecessarily, the burdens imposed by government on the economy.
Before we consider the specific and onerous expansions of federal regulation that are already in the congressional pipeline, it is useful to get some overall perspective of the new trend. Such statistical corroborating evidence of the new wave of regulatory expansion comes form two researchers at the Center for the Study of American Business, Kenneth Chilton and Melinda Warren, who recently completed a detailed compilation of the budget and staffing of the federal regulatory agencies as proposed in President Bush's budget for fiscal year 1991.
The two researchers estimate that spending by federal regulators will reach a record high of $12 billion in fiscal 1991. That represents a 9 percent rise in nominal terms (up 4 percent after adjusting for inflation.) Last year's budget, by contrast, as submitted by outgoing President Ronald Reagan, called for only a 2 percent nominal increase in regulatory spending (a reduction of 1 percent in real terms). Interestingly enough, after Congress and the Bush administration finished acting on the fiscal 1990 budget, the increase exceeded the inflation rate by 2 percent.
Reagan pursued a deregulation strategy that included personnel reductions, dropping the regulatory staffing by 15 percent during 1981-85, to a low of 101,300. In his second term, Reagan allowed very modest staff growth - about 1 percent a year. In addition to planning for a much larger increased in 1991, Bush is gouging along with congressional action that is adding 2,000 more staffers in 1990 than the previous administration had planned. Thus a 3 percent growth in federal regulatory head count in 1990, followed by 4 percent increase in 1991, signals a significant departure from the game plan of the past. Regulatory staffing, according to this new fiscal plan, will rise by 4,300 in fiscal 1991. This single-year increase equals the total growth in the federal regulatory work force from 1985 to 1989.
In short, Bush appears less skeptical about the role of federal regulators in the U.S. economy. He is wiling to provide more resources - dollars and staffing - to these efforts than was Reagan. Indeed, his administration is on a regulatory growth trajectory that looks similar to budget trends form the Carter years.
The budgetary and personnel data also portray significant changes in the relative importance of the different regulatory endeavors. Twenty years after Earth Day, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is king of the regulatory hill. The EPA alone accounts for nearly one-third of the aggregate budgets of all federal regulatory activities. In 1970, the fledgling agency received less than 15 percent of the total.
Bush's pledge to be the
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