OCR Text |
Show Page The National Enterprise, July 27, 1977 twenty-fou- r The Presidents promise What question is often asked, happened to President Carters pledge, made while he was on the campaign trail, to slash government red tape? It is a good question and, while usually asked by businessmen who are closer to the problem than most, one of vital importance to every consumer in that, inevitably, governmental red tape imposed upon the business community adds to the cost of production and, consequently, to the prices paid by consumers for goods and services. As to what happened to the Carter pledge, an article in U.S. News and World Report strongly suggests that it was either just campaign oratory, or else the president just isnt privy to the ideas of the men and women he has been appointing to regulatory posts within the federal bureaucracy; most of whom the magazine points out, are strong advocates of more, not less, regulation. If the past six months are a guide, the article warns, there will be more rules and regulations coming from Washington not fewer. Just how' much more of a burden the economy and consumer's pocketbook can stand, no one knows for sure. Already, USN&WP says, if just the basic federal regulations were compiled in a book, a shelf 15 feet long would be needed to hold the 60,000 pages of fine print. And this year, the cost to the government (in taxpayer dollars) of administering its regulatory program alone will a 21 percent increase amount to $3.5 billion over last years total. But, as great as the direct cost to the taxpayers is, it is small compared to the costs The imposed upon business and industry and indirectly upon the consuming public, by the torrent of regulations and mandatory paper work pouring out of Washington. "Federal departments and agencies, de Toledan the send out 9,800 different forms and receive 556 million responses a year. To fill out these forms, businesses spend an estimated total of $20 billion. The total annual cost of regulation for consumers? Official estimates range from $60 to $130 billion. President Ford (just before leaving office) put the price at $2,000 per magazine article documents, family. Add to that the 21 percent suggested by the increase of that percentage in the cost to the government of administering the programs in the first six months of the Carter regime, and the tab for the average family soars to $2,420 a year; just for the paperwork blitz alone. Nor are businesses and consumers, as such, the only ones affected by the regulatory mania. Colleges and universities, for example, are being inundated too. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools reports that it costs some colleges 50 free dollar cents to administer every received from the government while, at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the computer center was tied up for six months trying to handle the rules laid down by one bureaucratic agency, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, better known as HEW. Little wonder that there is a taxpayer and so-call- ed consumer rebellion brewing across the length and breadth of the land. Energy independence delayed by Ralph de Toledano Copley News Service The Senate, it is being said in Washington, has handed President Carter a defeat by approving the Clinch River breeder-reactoMr. Carter, however, can flash his teeth and out that the Senate has slowed down work on the reactor point for a year. r. The In reality, it has been something of a stand-ofwhich means of America defeated are the energy-user- s every man, woman and child in these United States. By both the President and the Senate delaying the breeder-reactohave merely delayed the time when this country may achieve f. r, energy independence. The Presidents reasons for wanting to ban the breeder-reacto- r are based either on woeful ignorance or on his fear of the small but noisy environmentalist" claque and its lobbyists on Capitol Hill. The President tells us that he opposes this cheapest, safest and cleanest way of producing energy because it involves the use of plutonium, which can be used in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. This might conceivably make sense if the United States had a monopoly on the technology. But France and West Germany are in on the big secret and for they are ready, willing and able to set up breeder-reactor- s and the line has any government which can pay the price already formed. and will get it nations want the reactor because they know what Arab oil is costing them. They also know that there is a limited supply of uranium, and the breeder-reacto- r produces more nuclear fuel than it consumes. They do not want the uranium monopoly, like the oil monopoly, to bankrupt them. The THE NATIONAL energy-poo- r the President stands like Horatio on and drags his feet on the bridge against the other uses of nuclear pow er, he is pushing hard for the return to coal. He forgets that during last winters energy crisis, it was the nuclear plants which could feed enough electricity into the nation's grids to prevent disaster. The irony is that w hile breeder-reacto- I r, He also ignores the studies which show that a return to coal will not only cost billions in the conversion of our utilities which the consumer must pay, but will also mean as a recent study a sharp escalation in lung diseases and in the has shown deaths that result therefrom. And this does not take into account the rise in mine fatalities and other occupational hazards for miners, as well as the strain on transportation facilities to distribute the nation's coal. The environmentalists have their own aims. Thev want to see restrictions on the use of coal, of oil, of nuclear power, even of solar energy. They argue, sometimes frankly, that the best thing for America and the world is a reduction in energy use and a slowdown in industrial growth the growth that provides a of all of to standard us. living rising They are against all of the devices which electricity provides and prefer the spinning wheel and homespun clothes. Perhaps we should be grateful that the Senate did not administer a karate-cho- p to the breeder-reacto- r program but it slowed down. Such a move would have merely set the merely United States behind the other industrial nations, with no effect on the putative proliferation of nuclear weapons deriving from the use of plutonium produced by the reactors. But the voter who is also the consumer and the taxpayer might well ask President Carter. "Whither goest thou?" Must the nations fuel bill continue to rise because a few environmentalists make unpleasant faces at Mr. Carter? Must there be a slowdown in industrial production is the polite term for it and a rise in unemployment as the cost of the President's political calculations? labor-savin- k f. V f. r g r zero-growt- h" What will it profit the United States to cut itself off at the are constructed eervwherc else in legs, while brccdcr-reactoi- s the world? These are questions that Mr. Carter and the but this presupposes some sanity Congress should be asked in official Washington. i t- |