Very encouraging story. Implications are much more bullish for growth than the two bit tax cut:
WSJ:
August 3, 2001
Regulatory Rollback Under Bush has a Major Impact on Economy
By JOHN HARWOOD and KATHY CHEN
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
WASHINGTON -- Six months into his presidency, George W. Bush is quietly and steadily using the federal government's far-reaching regulatory authority to stamp his imprint on American society.
Aided by a cadre of appointees who are skeptical of government regulation, if not hostile to it, Mr. Bush is easing enforcement of many government rules. And the effects of the changes are beginning to reverberate throughout the nation's economy, among banks and hospitals, oil companies and telecommunications giants, employers with labor-management problems and corporations seeking tax breaks.
At the Department of Health and Human Services, a top official has vowed to stop "overzealous" Clinton-era fraud investigations of some hospitals and nursing homes. The Environmental Protection Agency has frozen a probe of more than 100 energy companies suspected of violating the Clean Air Act, after Vice President Cheney questioned whether the law had been properly applied.
The Department of Labor is shifting emphasis from prosecution of workplace violations to helping employers avoid violations in the first place. And just Thursday, Treasury Department officials moved to change tax-shelter regulations to ease reporting requirements on certain transactions by businesses.
In each case, administration officials say they're no less committed to stamping out wrongdoing than their predecessors. But their approach to regulatory policy represents a philosophical shift as sharp as any occurring in the legislative arena.
"We are not a bunch of crazy, wild-eyed deregulators," says Cameron Findlay, the Deputy Secretary of Labor. "But we want to look at the costs as well as the benefits. And we don't want to do anything stupid."
The effort seamlessly blends the philosophic bent and political self-interest of the nation's first president to hold an MBA. Cheering on Mr. Bush's approach to regulation are the corporate executives who financed his presidential bid, helping raise a record-smashing $104 million for his primary campaign and $166 million in unregulated soft money donations to the Republican National Committee. Most of his top financial backers come from businesses with huge stakes in regulatory shifts, including banking companies, utilities and health-care providers.
Administration officials say their regulatory decisions will be made openly according to scrupulous cost-benefit analysis, not other factors such as insider influence. "It's very important that the public has full confidence that decisions are being made on the merits," says Budget Director Mitch Daniels.
For GOP donors and administration officials alike, regulatory rollback represents a major piece of unfinished business. Ronald Reagan set out to tame regulations in the 1980s. And even George Bush, who took a more moderate approach to regulatory issues, named his vice president, Dan Quayle, to head a White House "competitiveness council" designed to curtail the reach of rules.
What's different this time is that the Republican administration -- from top cabinet officials to second-tier appointees -- is more uniformly conservative. The upshot: Just as district attorneys decide which crimes to emphasize and how aggressively to enforce them, individual agencies are doing the same thing. And they're heeding candidate Bush's pledge to give Americans "more choices and fewer orders."
The new approach has already sparked some intense battles. Senate Democrats registered strong opposition to the nomination of John Graham as the top regulatory official at the Office of Management and Budget. Mr. Graham, a Harvard specialist in weighing the costs of government action against its benefits, was an adviser to the GOP Congress when it unsuccessfully attempted to pass a regulatory overhaul in the mid-1990s. In the Senate Commerce Committee Thursday, Democrats sought to kill the nomination of Mary Sheila Gall as chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, arguing that she sides too readily with industry on regulations to protect children.
.
.
.
interactive.wsj.com |
