Complicating regulatory reform is the wide variety of motives, assumptions, and policy objectives that have given rise to reform efforts. More effective (and more cost-effective) regulation of the private sector is one potential goal. There are other goals such as enhancing regulatory accountability to the president and increasing accountability to Congress.

Yet another goal is ending existing fragmentation in substantive areas of regulatory responsibility. During the past forty years, various reform proposals have been put forward that embodied one or more of these emphases. Finally, of course, there is the policy option of pursuing deregulation— of reducing the national government’s overall regulatory presence.

Predictably, strong movement toward deregulation opened up new issues concerning its impacts. It is impossible to generalize about the impacts, simply because so many fields of economic activity have been affected by deregulation and, in some cases, in markedly different ways. Reregulation is a decision by Congress or an administrative agency to strengthen or reestablish government regulatory requirements.

Ongoing and ever more intense debates over government regulation are inevitable in the years ahead. Regulatory activity is strongly supported by some as a means of ensuring fairness and equity in the marketplace, while opposed by others on the grounds that it poses a threat to individual economic and social freedoms. Regulation continues to be at a crossroads. Much more is at stake than a rule here or a regulation there—the nature of our economy and government’s relation to it are also.

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