House Votes to Put a Freeze on New Regulations

In a first step toward rolling back federal regulations, the GOP-led House on Friday voted to impose a 10-month moratorium on new rules governing everything from efforts to curb air pollution to processing asylum-seekers to setting reliability standards for cancer-detecting mammograms.

But even as Republicans and a handful of Democrats passed the Regulatory Transition Act in a 276-146 vote, they focused on a more sweeping reform of regulations to be considered on the House floor next week.

That legislation would require federal agencies to weigh the cost of implementing new regulations against their expected benefits in such areas as the health and safety of the public--a significant departure from the standards used to adopt rules without regard to the expense of carrying them out. And it could prompt a detailed review of existing government rules, which may lead to the repeal of many.

Rep. David M. McIntosh (R-Ind.), the freshman congressman who has crusaded against regulations since serving on Vice President Dan Quayle’s council on competitiveness during the George Bush Administration, called Friday’s vote “a temporary measure” that gives “tremendously significant” momentum to broader efforts to stem regulations and curb the federal government’s role in the lives of Americans.

Predicting that news of the Republicans’ initial victory would give energy to Americans fed up with the impact of government regulations on their lives, McIntosh said: “It’ll be even tougher for lawmakers to vote against it now.”

McIntosh has spearheaded Republicans’ efforts to “roll back regulations,” as promised in the 10-point GOP “contract with America” campaign manifesto. Calling regulations a “hidden tax on the middle class,” McIntosh and other GOP lawmakers have charged that government rules impose $600 billion in costs on American businesses and consumers each year. To bolster their case, proponents of regulatory reform regularly brandish stacks of cases in which bureaucrats and regulators have allegedly ruined citizens’ lives and livelihoods by enforcing government rules that often do not appear to make sense.

President Clinton on Tuesday labeled the Republican-drafted regulatory reform scheme as “extreme” and charged that it “would jeopardize the public in order to shield narrow special interests from government oversight.”

Clinton hinted that he might veto the measure and charged that it “stops in its track federal action that protects the environment, protects consumers and protects workers. . . . Therefore, to me, a moratorium is not acceptable.”

Friday’s vote came after Republicans fended off a welter of proposed Democratic amendments, including measures that would have granted specific waivers to the moratorium and allowed the government to proceed with regulations pertaining to aircraft safety, nuclear waste disposal and the Family and Medical Leave Act.

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On Thursday, Republicans turned away efforts to waive the ban for regulations affecting food safety. They did approve, however, a waiver that would allow the Interior Department to issue regulations allowing this year’s duck-hunting season to begin on schedule.

“The impact of this legislation would be to paralyze government, and I suppose that’s what many of its proponents want,” said a dispirited Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles).

Included in the regulatory moratorium would be Waxman’s bid to have the Food and Drug Administration regulate tobacco as a potentially addictive drug. The FDA is investigating the potentially addictive qualities of tobacco in anticipation of drafting a proposed regulation. And Waxman said it is nearly certain that the agency would have to discontinue that inquiry if the moratorium becomes law.

The Senate is moving briskly on its own, similar version of regulatory reform. On Tuesday, a Senate committee is expected to draft legislation calling for a moratorium on new regulations with a more sweeping bill affecting further regulatory actions to come. These measures have had the aggressive support of Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), ensuring that they will reach the floor swiftly.

In a measure of lawmakers’ frustration with the federal government’s regulatory efforts, the House on Thursday easily passed a measure to prohibit the government for up to two years from extending protections to any new species of plant or animal under the Endangered Species Act. Measures to be debated next week would affect efforts to renew environmental or public health and safety laws.

The regulatory ban approved by the House on Friday contains exemptions for proposed rules in areas where there is an “imminent hazard” to the public’s health and safety during the period that the moratorium is in effect. Under that definition, a federal agency could issue a rule between now and next December only if it can prove to the Office of Management and Budget that failure to proceed would result in death or severe injury to persons or endangerment of property.

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McIntosh insisted Friday that the waiver would protect the public. And he noted that there are potential savings of $50 billion from discontinuing action on six regulations that would be blocked by the moratorium.

The Clinton Administration has proposed about 820 new regulations since November, when Republicans regained control of both chambers of Congress. McIntosh said it is not clear yet how many of those regulatory proposals would be stopped by the ban and how many would be able to proceed under the health and safety waiver included in the ban.

While many Democrats conceded that the House will likely pass most of the proposed regulatory reforms, they questioned whether senators will adopt proposals as far-reaching as those called for by House Republicans.