75-05-B3
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Regulations[edit]
Transcript[edit]Some of us are convinced that the time has come to regulate the regulators. I'll be right back. Back in 1887, Congress established the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate the railroads. It was a well-intentioned experiment and there was some need for it, but to paraphrase the ads, "We've come a long way, baby." Federal regulations now cover nearly every aspect of business activity in America. Many of us think of this nation as the last stronghold of free enterprise, yet business and industry are more regulated here than in any other country in the world where free enterprise still exists. Most of us have grown up thinking of government regulation as being designed to keep big business in its place. That was the original idea. Those who wanted government to be our shield and protector assumed that regulatory commissions would be made up of wise and objective individuals immune to political pressure and dedicated to the public interest. They would serve as combination judges, legislators and executives; a kind of new fourth branch of government. The realities haven't matched those hopes. Dr. Paul McCracken, former chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers says, quote, "To anyone willing to look, it's clear that with distressing monotony regulation has produced sick and arthritic industries." Unquote. Back in 1937 a presidential commission told Franklin Delano Roosevelt that the regulatory agencies constituted, quote, "A heedless fourth branch of government. A haphazard deposit of irresponsible agencies and uncoordinated powers." Unquote. In 1961, an advisor to President Kennedy recommended a sweeping overhaul of regulations and ten years later a presidential commission found that regulatory agencies were slow, costly, cumbersome and uncoordinated. Who pays for all that? Not just the salaries and office overhead of the commissions but who pays in the form of increased prices, the inflation that's caused by unnecessary regulations? You do! The Bureau of Domestic Commerce has estimated that the National Labor Relations Board's anti-competitive policies plus acts by a few other agencies were costing consumers up to three billion dollars more in construction, one and a quarter billion in railroading, more than half a billion in printing and almost as much in supermarket prices. That's just a sample. The Independent Businessman's Association estimates its members, small businessmen employing 500 or less, spend 130 million man hours a year just doing government required paperwork. It adds 50 billion dollars a year to the prices they must charge. There are proposals before Congress for even more regulation, but there's something else before Congress. The president has asked for a new commission to take a hard look at six of the independent regulatory agencies and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Senate Bill 4145, if passed, will create the new commission. Special interest groups will lobby against it. You and I should lobby for it. Demanding that the commission it creates be manned by men and women who will decide where the laws of the marketplace can replace useless regulations and create real consumer savings. Remember the squeaky wheel gets the grease. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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