Legislation in Hindsight
Ezra Klein did an interview with the on-the-mend Henry Waxman on the subject of his recently-released book, and he promises that it will include a more sweeping description of how the sausage factory runs than is normally featured in this kind of work:
I wrote the book with the help of Joshua Green, a superb writer. It sets out many anecdotes and behind-the-scenes information that people don’t ordinarily hear about in books about how Congress works. They usually hear about a House subcommittee then a committee then the Senate then the Senate committee. They think about it in terms of little boxes. I try to portray the forces at play in dealing with legislation and how some things that were big battles at the time are now taken for granted.
It was a big battle to get food producers to put uniform labels advising people about calories and sodium and carbohydrates and other nutrients on food. But I think most people take it for granted that they can see those labels when they go into the store and use them to make their decisions. But the food producers said they were going to go bankrupt if they had to put these labels on, it would be such a burden, it would be excessive. Finally we got it passed. And I don’t think most people give it a second thought today. It’s just there. [...]
I also talk about the Clean Air Act, which is the most successful environmental law on the books today. There was a huge fight over a one–year period to get that legislation enacted. But now people in the Northeastern parts of the United States that were seeing acid rain don’t have that problem any more. And the cost turned out to be a tenth what they said it would be even though different industries argued that our economy would go to hell. Invariably they met their requirements, met them ahead of time, and met them at a fraction of the predicted costs. So we’ve had very successful laws. But very few people talk about government in those terms.
Funny, Connecticut’s Governor just vetoed a calorie-labeling bill for restaurants, using those very same scare tactics:
“Does it come as a surprise to anyone that a vegetable salad is healthier and more nutritious than a bacon cheeseburger?” the Governor said. “There has been a growing and troubling tendency by some to legislate nearly every aspect of our lives and society, including personal responsibility. Such legislation always comes at a cost to the taxpayer and to individual freedom.”
Governor Rell also noted the cost such a bill would impose on restaurateurs and on the Department of Public Health, adding, “This is hardly the economic climate in which to further burden our businesses and state agencies.”
I included that bit about the Clean Air Act from Waxman’s answer because it occurs to me that there’s a vast amount of what could charitably be described as lying going on in the organized opposition to progressive legislation, and somehow history manages to forget the names of those that tell tales of grossy inflated costs to industry and the supposedly market-destroying impact of pro-consumer and pro-health regulations. If the laws get passed, then advocates are putting their resources into the next fight; if the laws fail, then the lying goes unproven. But from watching the damage that can accrue to politicians that repeat these kinds of falsehoods, it seems like revisiting the claims of industry groups would have a strong public policy benefit, a potential that advocates haven’t yet tapped.