Telecommunications:  While Congress did not pass legislation in this area, the Federal Communications Commission has taken dramatic action to open all aspects of communications to competition and to eliminate regulations in the areas where competition made them obsolete.  The public is benefitting from an explosion of competition and new services.

While these initiatives represent dramatic progress in economic deregulation, continued work is needed.  I urge Congress to act on communications legislation and to consider other proposed deregulation measures, such as legislation on the bus industry.  In addition, the regulatory commissions must maintain their commitment to competition as the best regulator of all.

The other part of my reform program covers the regulations that are needed to protect the health, safety, and welfare of our citizens.  For these regulations, my Administration has created a management program to cut costs without sacrificing goals.  Under my Executive Order 12044, we required agencies to analyze the costs of their major new rules and consider alternative approaches, such as performance standards and voluntary codes, that may make rules less costly and more flexible.  We created the Regulatory Analysis Review Group in the White House to analyze the most costly proposed new rules and find ways to improve them.  The Regulatory Council was established to provide the first Government-wide listing of upcoming rules and eliminate overlapping and conflicting regulations.  Agencies have launched “sunset” programs to weed out outmoded old regulations.  We have acted to encourage public participation in regulatory decision-making.

These steps have already saved billions of dollars in regulatory costs and slashed thousands of outmoded regulations.  We are moving steadily toward a regulatory system that provides needed protections fairly, predictably, and at minimum cost.

I urge Congress to continue on this steady path and resist the simplistic solutions that have been proposed as alternatives.  Proposals like legislative veto and increased judicial review will add another layer to the regulatory process, making it more cumbersome and inefficient.  The right approach to reform is to improve the individual statutes, where they need change, and to ensure that the regulatory agencies implement those statutes sensibly.

PAPERWORK REDUCTION

The Federal Government imposes a huge paperwork burden on business, local government, and the private sector.  Many of these forms are needed for vital government functions, but others are duplicative, overly complex or obsolete.

During my Administration we cut the paperwork burden by 15 percent, and we created procedures to continue this progress.  The new Paperwork Reduction Act centralizes, in OMB, oversight of all agencies’ information requirements and strengthens OMB’s authority to eliminate needless forms.  The “paperwork budget” process, which I established by executive order, applies the discipline of the budget process to the hours of reporting time imposed on the public, forcing agencies to scrutinize all their forms each year.  With effective implementation, these steps should allow further, substantial paperwork cuts in the years ahead.