We're chopping down the thicket of necessary federal regulations
by which government too often interferes in our personal lives and out personal business.
When president Trump bragged about cutting red tape during his first state of the union address-
We have undertaken a historic effort to massively reduce job crushing regulations.
-the Democratic response was hardly a surprise.
But Democrats may be surprised to learn that at the dawn of the deregulation era in the 1970s
it was their party pushing to cut red tape and shut down entire agencies.
A leading figure in the fight to slash the state was none other than Jimmy Carter.
There is a limit to the role and the function of government.
It was senator Ted Kennedy who held extensive Senate hearings in the early 70s
with testimony from the likes of Ralph Nader and liberal economist Alfred Kahn
about the benefits of deregulating the airline industry.
The resulting Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, signed by Carter,
killed the Civil Aeronautics Board, a federal agency that decided which airlines could fly where
and even what they could charge.
The new competition to the old airline cartel reduced fares, expanded destinations,
and made air travel an option for those of us who aren't rich.
On Southern there's only one class of service and it isn't second.
Carter also looked at stifling government oversight of the rail and trucking industries
under a Democrat controlled House and Senate.
Result: competition intensified, prices dropped
and consumers saved more money on every day products.
We've deregulated the air industry, the rail industry, the trucking industry, financial institutions.
In 1978 President Carter signed into law a bill that limited Prohibition era restrictions
on home brewing
fully legalizing do it yourself beer production fostered a culture of experimentation
paving the way for a craft beer revolution beginning in the 1980s and 90s.
The year that Carter loosened the rules, the US was home to a mere 50 breweries,
today there are over 5000.
In two generations America went from global laughing stock to world leader
producing the richest lagers and tastiest ales.
The Governor of California during Carter's first Presidency was none other than Jerry Brown
then known as Governor Moonbeam
for his far out musings, glittery social life and lefty politics.
Yet Brown too could be a fiery skeptic of government.
And there is an overblown rhetoric and an overblown expectation
that if there is a problem, there must be a program to solve it.
In his legitimately awesome second inaugural address, back in 1979,
Brown said that, quote:
'Many regulations primarily protect the past, prop up privilege or prevent sensible economic choices.'
The idea that government has some omnipotence or omniscience
is completely absurd and counter to all of the thinking that went into this country.
So air travel is now competitive, though it should be more open to foreign competition damn it!
And the beer industry has been reborn.
But since the dawn of the disco era, governments at the local, state and federal levels
have imposed entirely new categories of regulations, such as occupational licensing,
which applied to about one in ten jobs 40 years ago, but now effects one in three.
Arizona, for example, will put its' citizens in jail for six months
for operating a blow drier without a permit.
Texas wants to make it a criminal offense to buy pecans without proper authorization.
And Washington DC wants to require that all day care providers have a college degree.
The aggregate cost of these regulations is staggering.
Last year, according to the free market Competitive Enterprise Institute,
federal regulations alone cost Americans 1.9 trillion dollars
or about 15 grand per household.
And while Trump has cut the number of pages in the federal register
by about one third since he took office,
There are still some 67 federal departments, agencies and commissions
currently working on over 3000 new regulations.
It seems you can't stop the regulatory state, you can only hope to contain it.
As Alfred Kahn and his contemporaries could have explained
licensing boards tend to be dominated by industry incumbents
who are mainly interested in protecting their own turf.
Regulation is the friend, not enemy of big business.
So what has changed over the years
about the party of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?
Democratic support for deregulation was partly born out of desperation in the age of stagflation.
Cutting red tape to foster dynamism was about the last move politicians had left.
By acting now we can control our future instead of letting the future control us.
So when the long economic expansion and stock market boom we enjoy now ends, and it will,
the best thing of law makers of both parties to ask themselves
might just be , what would Jimmy Carter do?