Clinton Assails GOP Regulatory Proposal

President Clinton, in another attempt to put distance between Administration policy and the Republican legislative agenda, on Tuesday portrayed a GOP proposal to freeze federal regulations as “extreme” and implied that he will veto the proposal if it reaches his desk.

Defending federal rules that he said save lives and protect the environment, Clinton said that the Republican regulatory reform plan would jeopardize the public to shield narrow special interests from government oversight.

“Some would use the need for reform as a pretext to gut vital consumer, worker, environmental protections--even things that protect business itself,” Clinton said before an audience of federal officials and a number of citizens who have benefited from federal health and auto safety rules. “They don’t want reform, they really want rigor mortis.”

The House is scheduled today to act on a measure contained in the GOP “contract with America” that would impose an immediate moratorium on new federal regulations and require federal agencies to perform a cost-benefit analysis on all future federal rules.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) responded that Clinton is trying to stymie the Republican agenda on crime, taxes, education and, now, government reform. “The President is locked into sort of a left-wing, big government approach that we are convinced will not work,” Gingrich said.

Although Clinton and his aides stopped short of an explicit threat to veto the Republican bill, his language left little doubt that he considers the regulatory moratorium irresponsible and will refuse to sign it if he can do so without imperiling legislation he wants.

“It would stop new protection from deadly bacteria in our drinking water, stop safer meat and poultry, stop safer cars, stop final implementation of the law that lets parents take a leave to care for a sick child. It would undermine what we’re trying to do to promote safety in commuter airlines,” Clinton said.

“These are extreme proposals. They go too far. They would cost lives and dollars,” he added.

In the audience were several people whose lives had been saved by auto air bags, now mandated by federal regulation.

Clinton said he has ordered all federal agencies to report by June 1 on ways to eliminate or simplify burdensome regulations. Vice President Al Gore is in charge of the effort, which is the second phase of the Administration’s “reinventing government” initiative.

Meanwhile, several architects of the nation’s clean air and water laws warned that the GOP regulatory approach would gut existing environmental laws, such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.

The bill would require the government to determine whether a proposed regulation’s costs to government and private parties is “reasonably related” to its benefits, including health and safety. It would also place a cap on the annual economic costs of all regulations.

The bill’s procedural requirements would cripple the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies, said Russell E. Train, EPA administrator under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, at a press conference sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The bill would “overrun our nation’s health, safety and environmental protections,” said Edmund S. Muskie, former senator from Maine, who also appeared at the press conference. “It would halt 25 years of accomplishment and turn the clock back to the days when the special interests made the rules and the people absorbed the risks.”