One area of agreement among environmentalists, their business counterparts, and governmental regulators is that none will admit satisfaction with the current state of the federal regulatory process. For years the business sector has lamented both the cost of participating in the process as well as the cost of complying with the restrictions and requirements it produces. To this chorus has recently been added the complaints of the public interest sector which, while it has very little sympathy for allegations of excessive compliance costs, has been forced to admit that the federal bureaucracy is steadily losing ground in its struggle to stay abreast of its burgeoning statutory responsibilities.

These complaints, particularly those of the business community, have struck a responsive chord in a White House committed to exploring every available means of battling the chronic inflation which has besieged the national economy. In March 1978, President Carter issued Executive Order No. 12044, entitled "Improving Government Regulations,"¹ which requires all agencies to, among other things, perform "regulatory analyses" of "significant regulations" (those having an effect on the economy of $100 million or more) before they are promulgated. Such analyses are to focus principally on the economic impact of the rule, as well as the merit in alternatives which are economically less burdensome. Rules already in existence must also be examined in an analogous fashion. At roughly the same time the order was released, certain members of the President's Council of Economic Advisors and the Council on Wage and Price Stability began to intervene actively in ongoing rule-making proceedings in a largely successful attempt to relax forthcoming regulations in the environmental and health and safety areas on the ground that they would have entailed excessive compliance costs.