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PLAYING TO THE BASE. The Bush administration is stretching its legs:
President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights, and privacy. In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president�s priorities.This move is in accord with the Bush administration focus on increasing the power of the executive at the expense of the other two branches of government, and with the more general Republican disdain for expert opinion and the civil service. Republicans have viewed the civil service bureaucracy as a problem that needs to be solved since at least the Reagan administration, so the preference for market-friendly (and likely socially conservative) political appointees is not surprising. The most important element of the Republican base has no complaints:
Business groups hailed the initiative. �This is the most serious attempt by any chief executive to get control over the regulatory process, which spews out thousands of regulations a year,� said William L. Kovacs, a vice president of the United States Chamber of Commerce. �Because of the executive order, regulations will be less onerous and more reasonable. Federal officials will have to pay more attention to the costs imposed on business, state and local governments, and society.�I hesitate to add that the lasting power that the president can exert over the civil service bureaucracy is yet another good reason for not doing silly things like voting for Ralph Nader...
--Robert Farley
