Mark Warner, Senator of Virginia, is the kind of Senator that anyone who longs for less partisanship in our politics would like to see more of. He's a Democrat, a successful businessman who made his fortune building Nextel, and has a reputation for being generally pragmatic, rather than partisan, a style that made it possible for him to break legislative logjams and get some things done when he was Governor of Virginia a few years ago.
New Senators look for ways to brand themselves, choosing an issue by which they can be known. It appears that Warner has chosen the "reduction of government regulation"for this purpose. Not a bad cause, at first glance; certainly no one in this country would be sorry to see less red tape, although Warner's claim that a major cause of businesses' failure to invest right now is their fear of "stifling" new rules and regulations from government. I think it's more likely that they are just taking some time to figure out what new legislation means for them.
Still, as I said, it's not a bad cause, and potentially a nonpartisan one. But I'm a skeptic about the way Warner says he'd accomplish the goal: A regulatory "pay-go" under which every government agency introducing a new regulation would have to get rid of one regulation of approximately equal cost (presumably, cost in lost time). This is an idea familiar from the days when Pres. Clinton succeeded in balancing the budget by requiring any new spending to be matched by an equal amount of cost reductions -- so we know it works in that context.
Reducing government regulation would be welcome, I'm sure, but I just don't see how pay-go could accomplish it. The whole process seems cumbersome and time-consuming. Warner claims it's working in Britain, but we're not Britain.
Examples: What would define a "regulation" - if one rule has 15 subparagraphs, is that one regulation or 15? Second, the opportunity costs would seem to be almost impossible to gauge; it's unimaginable to me how anyone could determine that 2011's regulation B, for example, is equivalent to Regulation A from 2003. Third, it seems it would be awfully easy for government agencies to play shell games with the rules. Last, if we want to reduce red tape, will a one-for-one swap (new regulation for old regulation) work, or shouldn't we shoot to reduce their numbers? Talk about a can of worms!
Procedural issues aside, it also seems to me Warner is forgetting one Big Fact: It's not government agencies that create all these regulations; it's the legislators (Warner presumably included, though perhaps more frequently our representatives in the House) who write and approve complicated, often poorly written laws, attempting to legislate for or about tiny specific pockets of our population. Then they leave agencies to try to write rules to carry out Congress's intent.
So: Simpler, clearer rule-making? Absolutely. But Warner's plan doesn't do him justice. Let's look for a way to get simpler, clearer law-writing. I think if he focuses on the issue that way, he may be just the man to get the job done.
Yep. If the laws enacted are clear, there's little need for a whole lot of complex regulations.
Posted by: Gabbygeeaer | December 15, 2010 at 07:53 PM