Subject: (Editorial):  Shooting Quayle
Date: Published: 11/25/91 (96 lines)
Source:  Wall Street Journal.  Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. 

    REVIEW & OUTLOOK (Editorial):
    Shooting Quayle

    It wasn't long ago that Vice President Dan Quayle was said
 to be Washington's village idiot.  All of a sudden he's become
 its scheming Rasputin.  This can only mean he's begun to
 accomplish something.
    In particular, Congress and the permanent government are
 outraged by Mr. Quayle's Council on Competitiveness.  This is
 the White House outfit established by President Bush to
 provide a sanity check on new regulations and promote ideas
 to improve the ability of Americans to compete in the global
 economy.  The council is a "shadow government," cries
 California Representative Henry Waxman.  "Quayle's hush-hush
 council," declares a piece in the New York Times written by
 acolytes of Ralph Nader.
    The Council isn't secret at all.  Its staff of seven works
 with other members of the White House staff and prepares
 policy choices for cabinet officers and Mr. Quayle.  Its real
 crime against the Beltway is that it's become the one part of
 the Bush White House that does creative thinking on domestic
 policy.
    The council is the driving force behind the Food and Drug
 Administration proposal to speed up drug approvals for such
 diseases as AIDS and cystic fibrosis.  It helped develop Mr. 
 Quayle's proposals to reduce the costs and burden of
 lawsuits.  (This explains the Nader network's wrath.)  And it
 tried to write regulations on wetlands, recycling and clean
 air so they don't impose an undue burden on business and
 throw Americans out of work.
    All of this is cause for alarm in a Washington that writes
 ever more elaborate rules for how Americans should lead their
 lives.  Mr. Waxman and New York Representative Ted Weiss are
 conducting document-fishing exercises that will bottle up the
 council staff for weeks.  Congressman John Conyers' Government
 Operations Committee has even begun a formal "investigation."
 Perhaps he thinks the council is responsible for the "October
 Surprise?"
    Over in the Senate, Ohio's John Glenn (lip-synching for
 his staff aide Leonard Weiss) wants to put the council out of
 business by making its members and staff put nearly all of
 their conversations on the public record.  This is a blatantly
 unconstitutional intrusion into a president's ability to
 manage the executive branch.  But it's especially amusing
 coming from a Senator who intervened with regulators on
 behalf of Charlie Keating.  Will Mr. Glenn also let us listen
 to his conversations demanding HUD grants for Ohio?  
    As if this weren't enough, the council's enemies are also
 resorting to the ethics mudball.  Allan Hubbard, the council's
 executive director, is said to have -- in the now famous
 phrase -- "the appearance of a conflict of interest."
 Tennessee Senator Al Gore has shrieked that Mr. Hubbard
 should resign, because he has "more than $1 million in a
 company that is polluting the environment, but he is in
 charge of the regulations governing the pollution."
    Calm down, Senator.  Here are the facts.  Mr. Hubbard is
 part owner of World Wide Chemicals Inc., of Indianapolis, a
 small (50-some employees) maker of auto waxes that he helped
 found in 1977.  He is paid annual dividends but resigned from
 the board of directors when he joined the government.  He is
 recused from any government decision that might affect World
 Wide directly, though he is allowed to consider regulations
 that would affect the chemical industry generally.
    If this is a conflict of interest, so is just about any
 stockholding by anyone who votes on environmental laws in
 Washington.  Moreover, World Wide's emissions are so small
 that they probably wouldn't even be covered by the permitting
 laws under the new Clean Air Act.  The company has never
 thought it even needed a local emissions permit, especially
 after it asked an Indianapolis law firm to review its
 environmental compliance in 1989.
    "We acknowledge that smaller companies like this are many
 times not going to know they need permits," says David
 Jordan, administrator of the Air Pollution Control Division
 of Indianapolis.
    The Hubbard flap has the look of a political hit.  Mr. 
 Jordan told us that he was first alerted to ask questions
 about World Wide "two or three months ago" by "the staff at
 EPA" -- the Environmental Protection Agency.  This is just
 about the time the Competitiveness Council began to clash
 with EPA over new clean air regulations.  Does EPA's William
 Reilly know his bureaucracy is running out of control?  
    The assault on Mr. Quayle's Competitiveness Council is
 just one more sign that the members of Washington's permanent
 government will try to destroy anyone who disagrees with
 them.  Maybe it's time for President Bush to speak up for the
 few people in his administration who actually want to achieve
 something.

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