By EDWARD BIRNBAUMLos Alamos
I think most people would agree with at least one sentence of Rep. Steve Pearce’s recent op-ed in the Los Alamos Daily Post, i.e., “The United States must do more to cut off the ability of criminal enterprises to launder money through anonymous shell companies.”
The complication is that he wants to accomplish this without imposing any “… burdens on the back of new businesses or the financial institutions that fund them.”
The question is, how can you cut off money laundering without imposing additional regulations and/or costs on either businesses or the Public? Rep. Pearce offers no suggestions as to how this might be accomplished.
This is a common theme in most of the op-eds of Congressman Pearce that I have seen, whether it be regarding fracking wastewater or methane burn-off issues. Republicans in general complain about “over-regulation”, or “too-costly regulation” or “duplication of regulations”, etc. The problem, of course, is that businesses and corporations all too often focus on their bottom lines and not on fixing or replacing operations that may sicken their employees or risk their safety, and/or harm the environment.
Prior to the imposition of federal and state regulations, employees all too often worked under conditions that resulted in sickness and premature death, as often happened to the poor people constrained to live in the environs of, e.g., factories, dairy farms and refineries, that routinely dumped their untreated or inadequately treated toxic chemical and/or animal wastes, polluting air, land and/or water.
Even today, there are many examples of companies that pay little attention to the harm that their operations can do to workers and the Public. One only has to look at the lead-containing water provided to Flint Michigan residents beginning in 2014 as a cost-savings measure, or the careless storage of large amounts of ammonium nitrate resulting in an explosion at the West Fertilizer Company facility in West, Texas in 2013 which killed fifteen and injured more than 160 people.
I don’t know anyone of any political persuasion who likes regulating business or industry for the sake of regulation. The goal of all regulation is to make the country a better place in which to live and work, e.g., by increasing the health and safety of workers, by improving the environment, or by insuring that all companies and the Public are treated fairly in the marketplace.
Although it is a nice thought that we can adopt regulations that accomplish our goals without additional cost, the reality is that regulations come with a price. Paperwork must be submitted by businesses, inspectors must be hired to provide oversight and ensure compliance, and a bureaucracy is needed to administer the regulations.
The real question is, is the benefit worth the cost? Should we pay to regulate asbestos in the home and the workplace to prevent lung cancer? Should we pay to regulate coal mines to prevent gas explosions? Should we pay to prevent enterprises from laundering money in support of criminals and terrorists?
I for one am not interested in returning to the days of yore when industry could pretty much do whatever they liked to their workers, and where sewage ran in the streets. By all means, let’s make sure that the costs of regulations make sense, but let’s not use that as an excuse not to regulate or to eliminate the regulations that ensure our health and safety.