Show rm February 1979 12 THE VOICE OF BUSINESS Why fight paperwork with paper By Richard L. President Chamber of Commerce of the United Stale President Carter's much publicized war on paperwork seems to have gotten bogged down in I'll bet you can't guess-more First it was the Cabinet Secretaries rebelling against his order to read all those regulations emanating from their Takes too much of our they We're supposed to be doing productive Then bureaucrats by the thousands emerged from behind their files and launched a massive counterattack assaulting the public with every kind of federal directive and data Consider how one-sided this war has The Administration claims to have reduced paperwork overall and the Environmental Protection Agency makes this same claim for its But other sources contradict EPA's claim and show it actually increased paperwork for business and state and local governments by 21 percent in the first nine months of the Carter and then by another nine percent in the next six It now takes three times as long to gain the government's approval to construct just one electric power plant as it did for the entire country to mobilize and fight World War There are federal regulatory agencies which have jurisdiction over of which 25 review admittance 31 regulate patient safety and 33 regulate patients' It costs hospitals per patient per day just to comply with And then there is the famous case of the now defunct Paperwork Charged with stopping the paper the Commission spent two while holding hearings in 19 cities and conducting 36 studies to find out The Commission left a rather staggering list of including a plan to a big new cabinet-level bureaucracy-the Department of would Ideally coordinate all government information Why is this problem so Two When the public demands more government spending and more as it consistently has done for then new regulations must be written-regulations which only lead to more paperwork and bureaucratic That's why the average family must now spend a year just for air and water pollution This figure could go as high as by Some estimates calculate the total cost for all regulations at per year per the President cannot control independent bodies such as the Nuclear Regulatory the Consumer Products Safety Commission and the Federal Trade And even his influence over agencies within the Executive like has been undermined by a court suit brought on by the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Certain members of the White House felt that an absolute adherence by industry to 's cotton dust standards was both unachievable and This attitude angered the union which believes has authority to promulgate health and safety people who have spent entire careers luxuriating in the power of these bureaucratic empires are not about to give it all up without a If we really want to return the government to the then strong measures are I propose rule-making excesses of agencies and commissions must be Congress must be given veto power when it a rule or regulation is contrary to the public the staffs of regulatory agencies should be severely and each agency should be abolished after a pre-determined period If It cannot justify its continued agencies should be required to prove that of proposed regulations merit the Consumers must currently pay approximately for mandated regulations each time they purchase a new Do they have a Is government really protecting consumers when it pushes environmental standards adding to the weight of thereby increasing their fuel while simultaneously moving to raise taxes on automobiles that weigh too much and consume too much Either way the government either way the it is time to start dealing with this whole problem with greater That means the President must stop denouncing regulations in one while advocating increasing the budget for regulatory agencies by backing a new Department of a Department of Natural a so-called Consumer Protection Agency and expanded powers for the Department of Energy in And it means the leaders of the business community must do more than defend the principles of free they must also live up to that is more unless each of us learns that government can never give without first taking then we may all wind up with The great historian Gibbon described how this happened in ancient the more than they wanted they wanted They wanted a comfortable life and they lost it comfort and When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to but for society to give to then Athens ceased to be America deserves |