“‘Everything Has a Price’: Jimmy Carter and the Struggle for Balance in Federal Regulatory Policy”, 2015-12-15 ():
Jimmy Carter himself embodied both of these impulses: he embraced government action to protect the environment and public health, and he also sought to make regulation less burdensome and costly. Both causes, in fact, were personal passions. Carter had spent childhood days roaming the woods and fields in rural Georgia. “Everyone who knows me”, he said while signing the Superfund bill, “understands that one of my greatest pleasures has been to strengthen the protection of our environment.” But government efficiency also animated the president. With a background in the Navy’s nuclear submarine program, Carter was used to calculating and balancing risks and benefits for strategic purposes. As governor of Georgia, Carter also had worked to rationalize state government, abolishing and consolidating hundreds of state agencies. Now in the closing days of his presidency, Carter spoke fondly of the utterly bureaucratic cause of information management and regulatory reform. One of the “high points of my presidency”, Carter recalled, was a day in 1978 when more than 900 minor and outdated safety and health regulations “were stricken from the books.” Carter characterized the Paperwork Reduction Act as a defining legacy. The law, Carter said at the signing ceremony, was “embedding my own philosophy…into the laws of our Nation.” At his very first presidential cabinet meeting, Carter had directed his cabinet officers and agency heads to cut down the “extraordinary and unnecessary burden of paperwork” on the American people. Carter now announced with pride and a little uncertainty as he signed the paperwork law, “We’ve addressed the bureaucrats, and we’ve won, right?” The White House audience laughed.
This article uses the records of Carter’s domestic policy and economic advisers and his budget office to examine a crucial lead-up to that December signing ceremony: the Carter administration’s efforts to manage the costs and burdens of federal regulation. Why did Carter and his advisers believe that improving federal regulation was so important? How did the administration’s approach to regulatory reform evolve over the course of Carter’s presidency? More narrowly, why did the Carter administration initially oppose strong Office of Management and Budget oversight of regulation and then later advocate legislation to strengthen OMB’s role? This is a story of tension and conflict as the Carter administration sought to balance regulation and reform, as well as trade-offs between agency independence and White House control. Carter’s integrated approach was, in some ways, less politically successful than Reagan’s single-minded tack. Carter’s compromises inevitably disappointed some of his own constituents, the environmental and health advocates calling for tougher regulation. Yet he also did not go far enough to win over conservatives and business advocates. Few interest groups rallied to support compromise and moderation. Yet if Carter had continued his reform efforts in a second term, perhaps his effort to strike a balance might have set the country on a more mature regulatory path instead of an extended political stalemate.
The White House’s relationship to federal agencies lay at the heart of conflicts over regulatory reform. Carter was trying to figure out how to effectively oversee the executive branch. His advisers quickly grew skeptical about designating OMB to serve as the federal government’s regulatory enforcer. They instead spread regulatory oversight across several executive offices and policy groups. The White House sought to partner with the regulatory agencies to help them improve government performance with new rule-writing processes. The focus on systems and processes and the diffusion of oversight power were hallmarks of the Carter administration’s regulatory reform efforts. The strategy of partnering with the agencies made the administration’s accomplishments politically feasible, but it also ultimately frustrated White House policymakers and made them hunger for more effective oversight. Regulatory agencies and labor and environmental advocates in the Democratic coalition resisted and slowed the administration’s progress.
By the end of Carter’s term in office, the Carter administration had forcefully asserted the president’s power to review, and even to overturn, agency regulatory decisions. Carter’s senior staff also settled on OMB as the only viable agency to oversee regulatory reform. In its closing months, the Carter administration created the institutional framework that Reagan’s OMB would use for its regulatory review efforts. The Carter administration’s initial move away from OMB power and his administration’s subsequent efforts to strengthen OMB’s role are thus critical to understanding the rationale and origins of OMB’s controversial regulatory review authority. The hostile anti-regulatory rhetoric that characterized the early Reagan years differed sharply from the Carter administration’s emphasis on balanced and efficient regulation. But the central substantive thrust of Reagan’s regulatory program in the early 1980s continued efforts initiated by the Carter administration in the late 1970s.
Although commonly remembered as a liberal regulator, in part for his creation of the Department of Energy and his push for national energy conservation and planning, Carter more accurately should be seen as a leading deregulator of the 20th century. Scholars have long documented how the Carter administration enthusiastically deregulated many long-controlled industries, including air travel, trucking, finance, and railroad shipping. The administration also laid the groundwork for the decontrol of oil and natural gas prices. Carter considered his record on industry deregulation “one of the best success stories” of his presidency, and his domestic policy staff described it as “one of the President’s great domestic legacies.”