Coping With Regulators
Back in 1981, when the new Reagan Administration began to hack away at the regulatory undergrowth of the federal establishment, there were fears that Washington would begin to wither. With deregulation and a shrinkage of the federal rule-making apparatus, there would be less need for lawyers and lobbyists who carried the cudgel for one side or the other in such matters.
Those fears, of course, were unfounded. In fact, the Conference Board, a consortium of business organizations and trade associations, has found that American corporations have had to devote more attention to federal regulatory and legislative issues since Ronald Reagan took office than ever before. Of 300 companies surveyed by the board, more than 80% said that both the number and importance of federal issues have climbed since the beginning of 1981. Half of them said the federal burden had increased greatly.
Seymour Lusterman, the author of the study, said that this development during an Administration generally regarded as more pro-business than any other in modern times “has been sobering and instructive to most corporate leaders.” In spite of pressures to hold down business costs, nearly half of the firms have increased the size of their federal government-relations staffs since 1980.
Still the President said in his annual legislative message to Congress this year that his Administration has reduced the paper-work burdens on Americans by 560 million man-hours, adding: “To improve our efforts, the Office of Management and Budget will issue regulations that will provide a more timely and complete description of proposed reporting burdens.” Ah well, it takes regulations to get rid of regulations.
There is no question that the Reagan Administration has cut back on considerable paper-work, perhaps for the good, and in some cases perhaps not. Americans certainly could use more regulation in areas such as consumer product safety. To an unprecedented degree, the Administration has taken rule-making away from the various Cabinet-level departments and agencies and concentrated it in the White House. But most regulations are neither good nor bad. They are a necessary part of doing business in a highly sophisticated nation of 250 million individuals and a $5-trillion economy.
The author of the Conference Board report said that American executives fear that regulatory and legislative forces have gone outside the control of any Administration and the business leaders have concluded that “their involvement in the country’s public-policy process must be long term.”
But business has always been involved in the American public-policy process, and must be. And of course, it should be evident whose interests these high-powered lawyers and lobbyists are protecting.
