Patterico's Pontifications

1/19/2011

More On Obama’s “Smart Regulation” Op-Ed

Filed under: General — Aaron Worthing @ 6:50 am



[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

Yesterday, I derided Obama’s new “smart regulation” initiative, arguing that like a lot of the things Obama says, they sound great in theory but end up stinking in reality.  I pointed out, for instance, his desire to impose new infection control standards on hospitals was an example of onerous, overly rigid regulation that purported to “solve” a problem that no one could even prove existed.  After all this was not a choice between the big daddy federal regulators and no controls at all.  Even in the absence of state regulation, every state had a system of liability to punish professionals and institutions that engaged in malpractice which, if anything, was too stringent (see, e.g. the entire legal career of John Edwards).

To add additional perspective Walter Olson, blogging at Cato @ Liberty.  He agrees that Obama is saying some useful things, but finds what Obama doesn’t say disquieting:

So what does Obama see as an example of an excessive regulation needing repeal? The example he offers is the inclusion of the sweetener saccharin in the category of hazardous waste. Really? Saccharin as hazardous waste? Amid dozens of high-stakes, much-studied regulatory controversies, the only one he could come up with is one that — with all due respect to the people who make the little pink packets — is of hardly any significance to the wider economy, and not much more as a matter of principle?

Even this administration could have made better deregulatory boasts than that. For example, in a fit of sense, the Obama Justice Department a while back adopted regulations specifying that the Americans with Disabilities Act should no longer (as of this March) be interpreted to require restaurants, theaters and other Main Street businesses to admit patrons’ non-canine “service animals” such as monkeys, goats, snakes and spiders.

But it was almost as if his point was to pick a regulation so minor that no one cared much about it one way or the other. Had the President’s speechwriters been looking for an example of a hazardous-substance rule that would actually get people talking about regulatory overreach, they might have picked EPA’s dairy-spill regulations, which (in the words of one report) “treat spilled milk like oil, requiring farmers to build extra storage tanks and form emergency spill plans….” That one does have big and widespread economic costs.

Whoops — not a good example. That one’s not being repealed — EPA at last report intended to go forward with it. Can we really assume anything much is changing here besides the atmospherics?

And indeed I think I have mentioned in the comments on this site the ridiculousness of the EPA regulations.  William Jacobson talked about this months ago and the logic goes like this.  There are some natural oils in milk.  So the EPA declared that milk is oil, and as a result dairy farmers had to take on onerous safety measures to prevent…  spills.  Jesus wept, that is so stupid.

And to further deepen our analysis, it turns out that those regulations regarding Saccharin actually didn’t amount to much, according to Rena Steinzor:

President Obama’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this morning touted EPA’s “deregulation” of the artificial sweetener saccharin as a positive development for America. Inadvertently, the president made EPA look silly for having regulated the stuff in the first place.

Let me interrupt Rena and say that I don’t think there was anything inadvertent about it.  But I digress.  She continues:

The use of this example was also unfortunate because EPA’s decision to deregulate had little consequence. Here’s the back story.

Beginning in the 1970s, scientists discovered that if you feed large quantities of saccharin to rats, they develop cancer. As a result, products containing saccharin were required to carry a warning label, and saccharin went on the lists of “hazardous substances” potentially subject to the Superfund toxic waste cleanup and hazardous waste regulations, as did all carcinogens. This result seemed counterintuitive and industry lobbyists working against Superfund’s renewal in 1984-87 ridiculed EPA with the question: “If I spill a truckload of Tab, do I create a Superfund site?” Of course the answer was no. EPA did not have the time, the money, or grotesque lack of judgment to even consider pursuing such idiosyncratic problems, even if they had occurred.

Meanwhile, saccharin got a lot of bad publicity, and manufacturers of saccharin hustled to perform studies showing that in the amounts consumed by humans, the sweetener was safe. But saccharin, apparently through some administrative oversight of the Bush EPA, remained on the Superfund list. In the fall of 2010, Obama’s EPA delisted it, in response to a petition from the Calorie Control Council.

The listing had no significant practical implications for anyone in industry, and the delisting was so obscure that almost no one knew about it until it came up in the president’s op-ed. If people threw out saccharin products for any reason, government officials did not come swooping down to prosecute them for violating hazardous waste laws. If you didn’t hear about the rush to hire more workers in late 2010 after the saccharin burden was lifted, that’s because there wasn’t one. Saccharin remained one of only a handful of examples where a chemical, previously thought dangerous, was later deemed not dangerous. In fact, this problem was so negligible that although John Graham, George W. Bush’s regulatory czar, used it as an example of regulation run amok, even he did not think the burden on business was great enough to bother doing anything about its presence on the EPA lists.

So in other words, this was not an example of onerous regulation, controlling how businesses operated.  Unlike the milk example above, no one was putting up regulations to prevent the accidental spillage of saccharin.  The only effect of the regulation was that it made it theoretically possible to get superfund help in cleaning up such a spill, but in reality that had never happened, either.  It was just a stupid dead letter regulation.  It’s a fair example of stupid regulation, but hardly the best example, to demonstrate that Obama really got it and was really changing course.

Olson talked about it changing atmospherics.  I think he is hitting on what this is really about.  It’s like reducing the deficit.  Obama will probably propose some slight cut of the deficit—that is a reduction in the rate of increase of the debt.  It will do little actual good, but the press will try to crown him, therefore, a deficit “hawk.”  And after the most aggressive expansion of the administrative state since LBJ, Obama will make some middling reduction in regulation, and be praised as a regulation cutter.  He won’t have earned either title, but I guarantee you that the media will try to give it to him anyway, just in time for 2012.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

13 Responses to “More On Obama’s “Smart Regulation” Op-Ed”

  1. There was a study published many years ago that showed mice developed cancer if a dime was implanted in their abdomens. I don’t recall it was a silver dime but that is not an issue as silver dimes long ago disappeared from circulation in response to Gresham’s Law.

    My personal conclusion was that it was unsafe to carry too much change around in my pocket so, if I began to accumulate coins, I spent them on saccharine. Safety first !

    Mike K (8f3f19)

  2. mike

    well, it is worth noting that they have positively cleared saccharin of any danger. the short version of it is this. yes, it is dangerous to mice, but we are different from them in a law that is directly relevant to the chemical reactions taking place.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  3. I think it is a self-evident fact that the regulations of the federal government often do not make sense, overlap, conflict, etc., etc., but putting more federal bureaucrats in charge of straightening it all out under the guidance of Obama seems like letting the fox guard the hen house.

    There was that little issue a number of months/years ago that was burdensome on manufacturers of things sold to children to prove there was no lead in it that was a mess and Congress refused to ameliorate; don’t know if it was ever changed or companies just went out of business.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  4. Behold the “smart” regulator.

    Chris (6b0332)

  5. Large companies are complying with the toy regulations because they have the money to do the lead testing.

    Small companies are selling out to the large companies.

    Chinese toy companies are doing whatever the hell they like and saying, “Sue us if you have a problem. Good luck with how it all works out.”

    luagha (5cbe06)

  6. In the meantime, incandescent light bulbs have been taken away from consumers, so we must personally deal with the actually hazardous mercury if our cfl lightbulb breaks.

    Milk and saccharine vs. mercury.

    MayBee (081489)

  7. A.W. – As you pointed out yesterday, there is a big disconnected between the tone of Obama’s OpEd piece in the WSJ, which makes him seem like a crusader for progress, and the wording of the Executive Order itself, which makes him sound like a bureaucratic drone. Setting an overarching goal for the Executive Order in keeping with the goal of the OpEd piece would have been helpful, understanding he has to maintain bureaucratese in the body of the EO.

    Again, I point to the 1099 requirement in ObamaCare as an example of stupid and costly paperwork requirements imposed on businesses during Obama’s watch which should be repealed.

    daleyrocks (e7bc4f)

  8. Wow. I guess dairy farmers might actually have a good reason to cry over spilled milk then?

    Gesundheit (cfa313)

  9. Indeed, the recent legislation supposedly strengthening the restrictions on lead in children’s toys will not make toys any safer but has destroyed the toy industry’s smaller companies.

    And Obama mentions nothing about it.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  10. spqr

    that is referred to as a feature, rather than a bug.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  11. Aaron Worthing, I know it was for the Democrats who drafted it, because they’ve refused to acknowledge or address the issues that are resulting in it.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  12. If Obama were sincere about finding and fixing bad regs, he’d broadcast a request to all businesses to submit their three most onerous burdens. He could then compile the statistically worst 100 in a matter of days, and go to Congress or his three-letter agencies with recommendations for fixes.

    He’s not sincere, he’s just posing, and will get around to ‘studying’ some insignificant items in six months. It’s called running out the clock for a fawning media.

    Insufficiently Sensitive (b6274d)

  13. Regarding toys and lead, thank you to luagha and SPQR.

    I wonder how many jobs were lost due to that ridiculous legislation.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)


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