Political Quotes

“we all want and hope and believe in a significant and a meaningful regulatory reform. No one wants rules that do not make sense or are not cost effective. No one wants, or should want, regulatory requirements that exceed real needs. We want Government to be smart, efficient, reasonable and practical. There are plenty of regulatory horror stories, some of which are accurate, some of which are not. There is more than enough evidence, though, for us to be convinced of the fact that the regulatory process needs fixing. It has needed fixing for some period of time. We have been in the process of reforming it for years. Back in the late 1970's, when the Governmental Affairs Committee conducted a lengthy set of hearings and issued a multivolume report on the regulatory process, the findings in those hearings led directly to the Senate passage, in 1981, of Senate bill 1080, the number was at that time, by a unanimous vote, 94 to nothing. S. 1080 looked similar in many ways to the legislation which we are considering this week. It had many of the same elements, including cost-benefit analysis of major rules, a procedure for reviewing existing rules, legislative review, and Presidential oversight. S. 1080 did not make it into law because the coalition supporting it did not hold together once the bill got to the House. It was tough reform, and if it had been in place for the last 15 years we would not be here today with the legislation before us.”