经济学人:繁文缛节该省省了

CHEERS greeted Barack Obama’s hiring of Cass Sunstein away from the University of Chicago. Mr Sunstein, a lawyer, now head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, is in charge of lifting the heavy hand of regulation from America’s economy. Known for his clever economics, Mr Sunstein favours a “libertarian paternalism”; policies that nudge, but do not force, people to do the right things. For example, making people opt out instead of opting in to pension plans makes many more sign up, to their benefit. And Mr Sunstein has been involved in redesigning dietary recommendations and fuel-efficiency stickers for cars, making formerly confusing information more useful.
奥巴马从芝加哥大学挖来了凯斯•桑斯坦，此举让人欢欣鼓舞。桑斯坦律师现在是白宫信息和监管事务办公室主任，负责降低监管对美国经济的干预力度。桑斯坦因其睿智的经济学思想而名满天下，并且信奉对经济应持“家长式的自由管理”态度；他认为政策应该引导，而不是强制人民去做正确的事情。比如说，让人民选择是否放弃而不是选择是否加入退休金计划使得更多人参与该计划，并最终让他们自身受益。桑斯坦还参与了饮食建议与汽车燃油效能标签的重新设计，使得之前混乱的信息更易于理解。

Mr Sunstein is now in charge of overseeing a year-old executive order from Mr Obama telling every agency to slimits rule book. Mr Sunstein says every one has complied, with 580 proposals received from the departments under his purview. (Independent agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission are not among them.) And he says real savings are on the way. Lifting a requirement for states to require pollution vapour-recovery systems will save $400m in five years. Making it easier for doctors and hospitals to participate in the Medicare programme for the elderly will save $5 billion. He adds that agencies have responded not grudgingly (the old stereotype of bureaucrats loth to surrender cash or power), but eagerly.
桑斯坦现在负责监督一年前奥巴马总统颁布的行政命令（的执行情况），该命令要求各有关部门精简其规章制度。桑斯坦表示所有部门都执行了该法令，并且他管辖的部门已经上交了580份提案（不包括证券交易委员会等独立机构）。他表示更切实有效的节省计划即将展开。要求各州配备污染蒸汽回收系统的措施可以在未来五年内节约4亿美元。让医生和医院更方便参与老年人的美国联邦医疗计划的举措可以节约约50亿美元。桑斯坦补充说，各级部门并不是勉强应付该行政令（旧官僚体制往往不愿意交出资金和权力），而是予以积极配合。

But the Obama administration has added to the rulebook at the same time as it is trimming. And many of the rules are big: 194 of them, each with an economic impact (not necessarily a net cost) of $100m or more, have been published in the Federal Register. In George Bush’s first three years, 141 hit the books. Even if most have more benefits than costs, as the agencies’ economists calculate, the scope of regulation is not shrinking. The overall cost of regulation is unknown, and measurement controversial. One study for the Small Business Administration found that regulation cost $1.75 trillion a year in 2008, though many object to the analysis. It relies on a methodology, invented at the World Bank, which one of the bank’s researchers says was misused, and Mr Sunstein dismisses it as “an urban myth”.
但是奥巴马政府在精简法规的同时又在对法规进行增补，增补的许多法规都规模甚大：其中有194项经济影响（不一定是净成本）超过1亿美元的法规都已在联邦公报上公布。在乔治布什政府上台的前三年，类似的法规有141项。甚至即使大多数法规带来的利益都高于其成本（根据各级部门的经济学家计算），监管的范围仍然没有缩减。监管的总成本仍是个未知数，计算方法也饱受争议。一项对于小型企业管理局的研究表明2008年仅不完全统计分析的监管成本就高达1.75万亿美元，该统计基于世界银行研究出的分析方法，但该银行的研究人员表示该方法其实并不适用于此，桑斯坦也反对该结果，认为这是个“都市传说”（意即认为此事并不可信）。

Meanwhile, the executive agencies are accused of minimizing costs by counting only hours spent on paperwork or money spent on kit to comply with regulation. The real costs may be found in the hard-to-calculate perversion of behaviour that over-regulation causes. At the same time, the benefits tallied up by regulators may be overvalued (see article). The agencies calculate their own numbers, using their own methodologies. But what no one doubts is that compliance with the ever-expanding rule book is wearisome and hard.
与此同时，行政部门被指控通过仅计算文案工作时间和设备成本来最小化成本以迎合监管要求。真实成本可能体现在由于监管过度导致人们为了应付政策而表现出来的反常行为中，而这些成本是难以量化的。同时，各部门可能过高估计了监管所带来的收益（参考此文），因为各部门都使用自己的数据和计算方法来计算收益。但是唯一可以确定的是，想要符合日渐繁杂的规章制度已经是难上加难了。

Furthermore, the politics of removing regulations is harrowing. Each removal must go through the same cumbersome process it took to put the regulation in place: comment periods, internal reviews and constant behind-the-scenes lobbying. Ironically, regulated industries may actually not want regulations removed. They have sunk costs into compliance, and do not want those costs taken away to the benefit of upstart competitors.
而且，降低监管力度的政策同样难以实施。法规的精简需要和增加法规走同样复杂冗长的流程：评估阶段，内部评审，不停的幕后游说。讽刺的是，饱受法规监管折磨的工业企业实际上反而可能希望保留这些法规监管，因为他们不希望他们由于遵守法规所带来的沉没成本因为法规的消失而变成新兴竞争对手的利益。

Many proposals are floated to deal with this last problem. One, supported by the Republican candidate Mitt Romney, is to remove one regulation for each new one that is proposed. A second idea is to create a truly independent scorer for regulatory costs and benefits, modelled on the widely respected Congressional Budget Office. A third is to create a board of outside grandees to help break political deadlocks, like the Base Realignment and Closure commission, which was able to prod Congress to shut down military bases. And yet another is creating a full-time advocate for regulatory rollback: one state, Kansas, has created an “Office of the Repealer”, which aggregates complaints and suggests repeals to the governor and legislature. Lastly, automatic “sunsets” of laws have their fans, though Congress could mindlessly reauthorise laws gathered up in omnibus bills (and a bitterly divided Congress might allow good laws to lapse).
为了应对上述最后一个问题，许多提案纷纷浮出水面。其中一个是由共和党候选人Mitt Romney所支持的提案，内容为每当有一项新提案提出时，就废除一项对应的旧法规。第二个办法是以广受尊崇的国会预算办公室为蓝本，成立一个真正独立的评判机构来裁定法规的成本与利益。第三个办法是成立一个由外界知名人士组成的“董事会”，以帮助打破政治僵局，比如说就像之前的军事基地重组与关闭委员会一样，可以督促国会关闭军事基地。但是还有一个办法是成立一个全职机构负责回审监管法规：堪萨斯州率先成立了“废止议案办公室”，功能是汇总对于议案的反对意见并向政府和立法机关提交议案的废止建议。除此之外，还有人支持法律的定期自动“终结”，当然国会还是可能会无脑地重新为各项议案中提及的即将到期的法律延期的（而且加入自动“终结”条文后，国会内部的分歧也可能会让一些好法律在到期后无法被延期而流产）。

Finally, one bad idea is the REINS bill. Passed by the House, it would involve Congress more heavily in rule-making. If there is a body worse than the executive agencies at this kind of thing, it is Congress. A 1999 study by the OECD found that poorly written laws, not subsequent rule-writing, were at the heart of America’s regulatory woes. (No one has been foolish enough to suggest that Congress has become wiser since then.) Jim Cooper, a Democratic House member from Tennessee, says of his colleagues: “People vote on things they have not read, do not have the time to read, and cannot read.” He further despairs of the power of special interests to bend Congress’s will: “There is a pimento lobby,” he says of those who fight for the interests of those who grow the small red peppers served inside olives. “You do not want to cross the pimento people.” In such an environment, getting things undone is at least as hard as getting them done, and perhaps harder still.
最后不得不说，REINS法案（详细审查法案）是个糟糕的决定。众议院通过了该法案，国会可以越俎代庖地更多地参与规章制定环节。还有什么比行政部门更烂的类似机构吗？舍国会其谁！经济合作与发展组织（OECD）在1999年的研究表明，美国监管困境的核心问题是那些写的很烂的法律，而不是随后的规则制定。（没有人会天真到认为国会会吸取这份研究的经验而变得更加明智）来自田纳西州的民主党下议院议员Jim Cooper对他的同事表示：“国会那些家伙根本不去看他投了什么一票，也没时间看，更看不懂那些玩意儿。”他更对国会的意愿屈服于特殊利益集团之事表示失望：“有一个关于辣椒的游说，”他指的是那些为了争取那些种小红辣椒（餐馆里放在橄榄里的那种辣椒）的人的利益的人，“你们（国会）都不敢得罪那些“辣角色”。”在这样的环境里，要把现有法规取消不比建立新法规更简单，甚至有可能更难。