CUTTING REGULATION

In the House Republicans' effort to deliver the Contract With America last year, the inability to get a balanced-budget amendment typically is cited their greatest failure.

Rarely mentioned, though, is another pledge in the contract that went largely unfulfilled: significant regulatory reform.

House Republicans did their part. They passed a bill that would require federal agencies to provide detailed studies of risks posed by practices they are seeking to regulate and to lay out cost-benefit analyses. The bill made it easier for businesses to challenge new regulations and for landowners to receive compensation for rules that caused property values to decline.

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole led the effort to push a similar bill through the Senate. But he called it quits when he couldn't come up with the 60 votes needed to end a Democratic filibuster.

Then the House and Senate also failed to come to terms on a companion bill that, as passed by the House, would have put a freeze on the enactment of most new regulations.

Instead of real regulatory reform, we were left with a bill, eagerly signed by the president, that requires only that Washington pay for the rules it imposes on local government. Businesses were left without relief from the regulatory burden that some groups say cost the private sector 6.6 billion hours and $500 billion annually.

That's fine with the administration. President Clinton said the Republican bill undermined safety and environmental protections.

But regulatory reform need not be synonymous with gutting environmental laws. Much of the regulation targeted by Republicans is unnecessary and silly. And even those regulations that are needed must be weighed in terms of the trade-offs inherent in any government intrusion. Requiring regulatory agencies to justify new mandates with a cost-benefit analysis is reasonable.

House Republican Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, vows to revive the issue this year. Dole also hasn't given up. Unfortunately the presidential race likely will overshadow any efforts to assemble a coalition of Republicans and Democrats to stem expensive and often unneeded rules.