The lead story in today’s Washington Post — above the economy, above the election — is a warning that the Bush administration may deregulate something before it leaves office. Here’s the online headline and subhead:
White House Makes a Last Push to Deregulate
New regulations, which would weaken rules aimed at protecting consumers and environment, could be difficult for next president to undo.
The story begins:
The White House is working to enact a wide array of federal regulations, many of which would weaken government rules aimed at protecting consumers and the environment, before President Bush leaves office in January.
The new rules would be among the most controversial deregulatory steps of the Bush era and could be difficult for his successor to undo. Some would ease or lift constraints on private industry.…
Once such rules take effect, they typically can be undone only through a laborious new regulatory proceeding, including lengthy periods of public comment, drafting and mandated reanalysis.
OK, that’s news. A fair story. Although of course the reporter quotes no economist critical of regulation — just a couple of White House flacks and a business lobbyist — though he does quote at least three pro‐regulation “public interest” activists issuing dire warnings of impending doom.
But I was curious: Did the Post run a prominent story a few days before the 2000 election about the Clinton administration’s push to impose sweeping regulations before they left office? You know the answer: of course they didn’t. Before election day, according to a Nexis search, there was one reference at the tail end of the jump of a Post story in the Business section to the Mercatus Center’s Midnight Regulations website. So they knew about the problem — Mercatus was publicizing it, and the Houston Chronicle ran a front‐page story — but the Post didn’t think voters needed to know.
Even though, as today’s story mentions after the jump,
[T]he last‐minute rush appears to involve fewer regulations than Bush’s predecessor, Bill Clinton, approved at the end of his tenure. …
“Through the end of the Clinton administration, we were working like crazy to get as many regulations out as possible,” said Donald R. Arbuckle, who retired in 2006 after 25 years as an OMB official.
Maybe they didn’t quite grasp the problem back in 2000. We’ll see whether there are such stories toward the end of the Obama administration in the Post — and on Diane Rehm, and on ABC News, and in the New York Daily News, and all the other places that are very concerned about “midnight deregulation.”