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Show Federal Regulations Cost Everyone $450 Last year's federal regulations regula-tions added $2000 to the cost of an average home, $666 to the list price of a 1978 car, $22 to the average hospital bill and six cents to the price of every pound of Parks sausage. LAST YEAR alone 15,452 pages of the "Federal Register" were filled with new regulations; the tab came to $450 for every man. woman and child in the United Unit-ed States. Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Murray L. Weidenbaum has spent the last four years directing a massive study of the impact of regulation on society. Reporting Report-ing on his findings in the June Reader's Digest, Weidenbaum Weiden-baum writes: "WHEN OTHER invisible' costs are taken into account-the account-the impact of business failures caused by over-zealous over-zealous regulation, of slipping export figures, of sagging productivity, of technological eclipse in fields once led by U.S. expertise-then the drain on the nation as a whole becomes incalcuable." Few would dispute the desirability of cleaner air and water or safer products in the marketplace," the economist concedes, but even the best-intended best-intended regulations can backfire. ERISA, the act passed by Congress in 1974 to regulate private pension programs is a case in point. "WITHIN months," Weidenbaum observes, "13,000 of these plans were terminated. The firms involved-most of them employing employ-ing an average of just 30 employees-simply could not meet the immense cost increases entailed, in the regulations." Thus the workers whom ERISA would protect were instead left totally to-tally unprotected by pensions. Manufacturers routinely pass regulatory costs on to consumers. Other methods of dealing with the cost of regulation appear in the form of increased taxes. A single sentence from the Rehabilitation Rehabilita-tion Act of 1973 stated: "No otherwise qualified handicapped han-dicapped person shall be excluded from participation in any program or activity receiving federal assistance." THIS MEANS that wheelchair ramps must be provided at schools, hospitals and libraries receiving federal funds-including the library in Rudd, Iowa (population 429). The cost (taxpayer-funded): $1123. There is not a single wheelchair in Rudd. Weidenbaum recommends, as one way to add sanity to regulation madness, that an economic impact statement be required for each new regulation. A recent Occupational Occupa-tional Safety and Health Administration Ad-ministration (OSHA) edict covered occupational exposure ex-posure to benzene and would have cost the oil industry $500 million a year. The rules were struck down by an appeals court when OSHA could offer no estimate as to the number of lives that would be saved. PERIODICALLY, the economist continues. Congress should review each regulatory agency to determine deter-mine its usefulness. Alfred Kahn. former Civil Aeronautics Aeronau-tics Board chairman won approval to put the CAB out of business by 1984. A Senate study finds that OSHA has done little or nothing to reduce occupational occupa-tional injuries and illnesses, and could be dismantled. Such action, he says, could bring about '.'a control that balances costs and benefits, puts safety and risk in perspective per-spective and promotes the intelligent in-telligent and necessary growth of our economy and society." |
