Eleventh Hour: The Politics of Policy Initiatives in Presidential Transitions

3. Jimmy Carter’s Unfinished Agenda

3 | Jimmy carter’s unfinished agenda The weeks following Jimmy Carter’s loss in the 1980 election were some of the busiest of his presidency. Working with a lame duck Congress, Carter succeeded in creating the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and in creating a fund to clean up abandoned toxic waste sites, the last (and largest) program of the “environmental decade.” Carter accomplished just as much acting on his own authority as he did with the cooperation of Congress. His last twenty days in office featured a record twenty-six executive orders, ten of which were needed for the deal he negotiated to free the hostages in Iran during his final hours in the Oval Office.1 Carter issued a record twenty-six executive orders in his last twenty days in office, a veritable frenzy of executive policymaking. These included major policy initiatives, ranging from restrictions on exports of toxic waste to his creation of the Office of Civil Rights within the Department of Labor to enforce antidiscrimination policies. Carter’s activity immediately preceding departure from office represents the first instance of an ambitious regulatory agenda by an outgoing administration. In addition to its novelty, the administration’s lame duck agenda was unique among modern transitions because it was less of a concerted effort than the priorities of several different cabinet departments and agencies acting under their own discretion. The cabinet departments and agencies acted independently, operating effectively and quickly under various statutory mandates. The 1980 election was followed by difficult choices. Faced with the prospect of new appointees in the incoming conservative, antiregulatory administration undoing their work, top administrators scrambled to complete new regulations that had been the focus of their work for months or years. Other priorities with little hope of completion before the transition, such as proposed Department of Education Rules on bilingual education, were abandoned entirely.2 Altogether, more than twelve thousand pages were added to the Federal Register during the eleven-week lame duck period. The Carter Administration’s lame duck agenda was on a collision course jimmy carter’s unfinished agenda • 41 with that of the president-elect, who had campaigned and won on the theme of regulatory relief. Within days of taking office Reagan made good on this campaign promise of regulatory relief.3 Incoming OMB Director David Stockman announced a moratorium on all pending regulations, including final rules listed in the Federal Register that had yet to take effect. In the first instance of what would become a rite of inauguration, the Reagan Administration froze Carter’s late-term rules and called their legitimacy into question by criticizing their timing. “These are ‘midnight’ regulations,” Vice President George H. W. Bush announced when he convened his task force on regulatory relief. “They will not be made final in their current form, but will be reviewed.”4 The regulatory freeze was also the first stage in an effort to roll back regulations and centralize the regulatory process within the White House, building upon the system Reagan inherited from Carter. regulatory review A deregulatory mood had taken hold in Washington well before Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign. An estimated 150 regulatory reform bills were introduced in congressional committees in 1979 alone.5 That Carter’s administration would be denounced by his successors for reckless regulation is somewhat ironic, considering his own advocacy of deregulation as an instrument to stimulate economic growth. Contrary to the criticisms made by his detractors that he overregulated, among the significant achievements of his presidency was legislation that deregulated key sectors of the economy.6 Carter took a harder line on regulation than his predecessors by institutionalizing regulatory review. Building upon structures introduced by the Ford Administration, the White House review of new regulations became a routine feature of agency rulemaking.7 Agencies conducted their own analyses of proposed regulations, with the awareness that they could be subject to review by the White House Regulatory Analysis and Review Group (RARG). Finally, Carter instructed agencies to use “common sense” and “clear language” in writing regulations. In announcing his regulatory review directive, Carter urged that the federal government should not just “throw another law or another rule at every problem in our society without thinking seriously about the consequences.”8 cabinet Government’s last Gasp Two misleading allegations are implied in Bush’s characterization of Carter’s “midnight” rules. First, labeling them “midnight” rules implies that they were 42 • chapter 3...