Democrats Gearing Up To Oppose GOP Reg Reform Plan

Conservative Republicans' goal of scaling back the reach of the federal government will face a major test Thursday, when the House debates a bill that would require the Office of Management and Budget to report the annual costs and benefits of all federal regulations.

Supporters of the Regulatory Right-to-Know Act, led by Rep. David McIntosh, R-Ind., say the bill would force federal agencies to be more "accountable" for their actions- or at least take potential private sector costs into account when crafting new rules.

McIntosh's bill is backed by several business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Federation of Independent Business. But opponents of the measure- led by Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, and Joseph Hoeffel, D-Pa., contend the bill would give conservatives ammunition to scale back labor, consumer, health and environment regulations.

As with many government reform measures, the key vote will come on an amendment to the bill. The three Democrats- who have Commerce Committee ranking member John Dingell, D-Mich., in their corner- are building support to add provisions to the bill that would forbid the OMB to spend more than $1 million on the annual report required by the McIntosh legislation. The amendment also would require the OMB to report the total amount of "corporate welfare" given out by the federal government each year.

But McIntosh, in a "Dear Colleague" Tuesday, said the amendment would "cripple" his bill by requiring the "costly analysis" of corporate welfare. In their own "Dear Colleague," Dingell and Waxman argue the bill would "waste taxpayer dollars by forcing agencies to use scarce resources to analyze thousands of insignificant rules each year."

McIntosh countered that if "Americans have a right to know how much the federal government collects each year in personal income taxes, Americans also have [the] right to know the even larger amount they spend annually to comply with federal regulations"- which he estimates at $700 billion. A similar bill awaits floor action in the Senate.