76-10-B4
- Main Page \ Reagan Radio Commentaries \ 1977
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Added Inflation[edit]
Transcript[edit]Many times on these programs I've talked about government regulations and how they impose on your freedom. I've also talked about taxes and given examples of how so called business taxes wind up in the price of the products you step up to the counter to purchase. To inflation and taxes let's add another cost to all of us which is the indirect inflation brought about by excessive regulation and government statues. In spite of all the talk and Congressional debate, regulations are multiplying like spores on a fungus. In 1974 all the talk seemed to be heading toward some kind of action. But also in 1974 the Federal Register needed 45,422 pages to list all the new United States government decrees and regulations that year. That was a twenty five percent increase in pages over the preceding year. Funk & Wagnalls new enclyclopedia - twenty five volumes - a stack of books three feet high -had only 12,000 pages! Those regulations add to the cost of doing business in many fields and in many ways which means they add to the cost of the things we buy. Congressman Bill Armstrong of Colorado says, for example, "Restrictive rate policies of the Interstate Commerce Commission add five billion dollars per year in excess freight rates passed on to the consumer". Senator Jim McClure of Idaho confirms this by calling attention to Brookings Institute study which put the economic loss caused by I.C.C. regulations in 1968 alone as ranging from a low of some three point eight billion dollars to a high of almost eight point eight billion dollars. Congressman Armstrong also gave an example of what we pay for some of the reform programs over and above the tax cost for implementing those programs. Obviously, we all support anti-pollution efforts but we'd like to know whether we are getting cleaner air and water at the best possible price. In 1972 Congress jumped on the pollution bandwagon. It was the newest and best political cause since motherhood. In just four years -- by 1976 - one hundred and twenty seven billion dollars had been added to industrial costs which of course, added to the inflationary spiral. Prices went up in each of those four years for industrial products we buy. Last year, Congress adopted rule reforms including a requirement that new spending schemes carry an "inflationary impact statement', an estimate of what effect the spending program would have on the rate of inflation. You can't fault that as an idea for slowing down the increase in the cost of living. But, apparently Congressmen reserve the right to disobey their own rules or at least to make exceptions. It took one of their colleagues, Representative Bob Bauman of Maryland, to blow the whistle on the growing practice of committees which pass spending programs out to the floor with the simple assurance that there is -QUOTE -- "no inflationary impact" - UNQUOTE. He gives an example; the suspension of food stamp regulations which wound up adding up to a billion dollars in cost. All told, he says the total inflationary impact of eleven different bills is about twenty-two billion dollars in added government cost. Yet all eleven were reported out of their respective committees with the flat declaration that they would not contribute to inflation. When we are already spending some fifty billion dollars over and above our revenues there is no way you can increase that deficit by almost fifty percent without adding to inflation. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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