The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Federal Paperwork

ROBERT MacNEIL: This pile is the paperwork prepared by one oil company in response to one questionnaire from a Senate committee. It took two man- years to produce and eighty-seven other companies did the same. These are all the forms a business must complete to enroll one employee in a pension plan as mandated by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974. It is twenty-six feet long. Tonight, the growing burden of federal paperwork.

Good evening. Yesterday was D-day in the Carter administration`s crash effort to reduce federal paperwork. A month after taking office Mr. Carter joined the popular crusade against the paperwork monster and gave all federal agency and department heads five weeks to submit plans. The deadline was yesterday, and they have until September 30 to put them into effect. Tonight we look at how monstrous the problem really is, and whether the public can realistically expect any relief. The bald statistics make the problem sound very bad indeed. The paper the Washington bureaucracy generates or requires now averages no fewer than fifty forms for every man, woman and child in the United States. Based on the Commerce Department`s census as of 8:30 yesterday morning, that makes the total fifty times 216,787,337 forms. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: Robin, the anti-paperwork people are full of staggering statistics like that to make their point, like their claim that federal paperwork costs the public $40 billion a year, more than NASA has spent on space exploration in the last ten years with some cash left over to bail out New York City. Fortune magazine says however, that that figure is a bit on the mythical side because it apparently includes every scrap of paper used by the federal government no matter what its purpose. Another less mythical statistic is the number sixteen; there are sixteen warehouses around the country where the government stores its paperwork. This one is located up the road from Washington in Suitland, Maryland. Now here come some more figures. That Suitland facility has two million cubic feet of floor space and thus paperwork. All sixteen add up to 11.6 million cubic feet, or enough paper to fill up the Washington Monument eleven times One more example, and I`ll go away. Last year the Kaiser Aluminum Company assembled eighty employees on a rooftop to make a point that it takes eighty man-years of employee time to cope with the 240 file boxes of reports that the federal government requires from Kaiser every year. Robin?

MacNEIL: Many other companies have been recently studying what the paperwork burden costs them in man-hours and cash. One of them is the Chrysler Corporation. S.L. Terry is a Chrysler vice-president. Mr. Terry, how has Chrysler`s paperwork burden grown over the years?

S.L. TERRY: Well, it`s going up exponentially, Robin, and we were very concerned about it, so we took a count in 1972 in just one area. That`s the area that it takes to certify our cars to meet emission standards. Then we compared what we had in 1972 with what we had in" 1975, just three years later, and we found that the guidelines that are put out by the Environmental Protection Agency to tell us what to do were 774 pages in 1972; in 1975 there were 8,758 pages, over ten times as much. The pages of changes that we had to ask for, according to procedures laid down by EPA -- 1,218 in `72; 20,773 by 1975. So you see how it`s going up.

MacNEIL: Yes. How much do you figure that it costs the Chrysler Corporation to fill out, complete, handle federal paperwork?

TERRY: We started to try to figure that out, and we gave up because it would take too many man-years just to do. In fact, we figured that it would take us two men a year -- two analysts a full year -- just to figure out all the forms that we have to fill in and how much it would cost, without taking any reading on where we were going or where we had been.

MacNEIL: Do you have any idea of how much it costs you in cash, in money?

TERRY: One idea you can get from the fact that it costs us four million dollars a year just to certify cars ahead of production for emission standards.

MacNEIL: Certifying means what?

TERRY: That means we have to prove by testing and by paperwork that our cars will meet emission standards before they go into production; this is to EPA`s satisfaction.

MacNEIL: Can you honestly say that a substantial amount of that is unnecessary?

TERRY: Well, certainly. We would have to do this ourselves to our own satisfaction, but the difference is that the way it is now EPA tells us ahead of time what we have to do,. how we have to do it, and we have to turn in paperwork to explain what we`re going to do and then what we did at every step along the way. So it starts over a year before production. We have to turn in a pile of paper that`s that high just to tell them what kind of cars we`re going to build, what the details are of those cars on paper before we ever build the cars.

MacNEIL: If there`s going to be government regulation of things like pollution and safety of automobiles and so on, doesn`t there have to be that kind of report?

TERRY: There has to be some paperwork, but really all that`s required is to describe the procedures that are necessary to test the cars to a given performance standard, and then the manufacturer can certify that his cars do meet those levels. If he certifies it, then the government can assume that the cars meet the levels. Now, the government doesn`t have to be satisfied with that; in fact, they`re not anyway. Even with all this advance certification process, EPA still wants to test our cars as they come off the assembly line. If they`re not meeting as they come off the assembly line, we have to recall them or correct them or whatever`s necessary. Then they also test them after they`re out in the field, and if they don`t test right in the field then they ask us to recall them there. Why all the paperwork ahead of time before we ever produce the first car?

MacNEIL: So you`re arguing that a lot of that paperwork on proving to the government that you`re meeting their standards, for instance, on pollution, before the car is made and while it`s made and after it`s made could be eliminated because they take the cars and test them anyway.

TERRY; Sure. It`s just proving we`re going to meet it. Why does EPA have to have a voice in that? Why does the government care? The cars have to meet the standards anyway, so why all this advance work that has to be done in terms of first saying what you`re going to do, then describing what you`re doing in paper while you`re doing it, the changes you`ve made -- all that before you even produce the first car?

MacNEIL: Thank you. We`ll come back. The anti-paperwork crusade has thrown up its own folk-hero. He is Ernest Angelo, the Mayor of Midland, Texas. When the histories of this era are written, he may well get a footnote as the author of Angelo`s revenge. Mayor Angelo is in the studios of Public Television Station KERA in Dallas. Mayor Angelo, what got you so mad about government paperwork?

ERNEST ANGELO: Well, I believe it was in July of 1974. We reached agreement with HUD for a 100-unit housing project for the elderly and handicapped to be built in Midland. Eighteen months later, after the usual red tape and requirements, we hadn`t even got the ground broken for the project. And the one thing that really set us off, I guess, was the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission`s ridiculous and arbitrary requirements that caused us to lose an option for the choice site for the project, making another site selection required at a considerably higher cost to the taxpayers.

MacNEIL: So that got you kind of annoyed, and you took your revenge. What exactly was "Angelo`s revenge"?

ANGELO: Well, rather fortuitously, you might say, we received a request from the Dallas office of HUD for a parking space at the Midland air terminal. And we thought we would just reply in kind, so we required the usual seventeen copies of City of Midland Form 75; we required a certification from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that all who operated the car would be divided by percentage equally by race and sex and age; we required that all who were even associated with the automobile would have to wear steeltoed boots and crash helmets, et cetera, to meet the OSHA requirements; we demanded a certification from the Environmental Protection Agency that the car`s presence at our airport, which handles about a thousand passengers a day, would not damage the atmosphere; and then we requested a certification from the United States Attorney General that all of the certifiers had the authority to certify and that the United States itself was a duly organized and legal entity with the power and authority to operate an automobile.

MacNEIL: I think I get the point, Mayor Angelo. And what did HUD say to all that?

ANGELO: Well, maybe disappointingly, we haven`t really heard anything from HUD, and the gentleman who requested the parking space is still parking a half mile or so from the airport and hitching a ride from there.

MacNEIL: Seriously, Mr. Mayor, doesn`t a great deal of the federal paperwork for a city like Midland, with 70,000 people, involve programs that directly benefit the people of that city?

ANGELO: That`s correct; yes.

MacNEIL: So could a great deal of it be eliminated without losing those services?

ANGELO: I think it could, and I think that the forms could be shortened, I think they could be simplified, I think they could be modified and flexible enough to meet the different requirements of the area. For instance, we had a paving project to be done with community development funds, and it was to pave existing dirt streets in a minority neighborhood in the community. And the requirements for an environmental protection statement showing damage to the environment were so lengthy and took so much trouble that we went past the weather conditions for paving and the residents of the community were stuck with muddy and dusty streets for the entire winter because we hadn`t completed the requirements. That`s just one example.

MacNEIL: I see. Thank you; we`ll come back, Mayor Angelo. Jim?

LEHRER: Robin, official concern over Mayor Angelo`s and others` paperwork complaints did not begin with Jimmy Carter. A bipartisan commission on federal paperwork was created in 1975 to make recommendations on how to solve this problem. Senator Thomas McIntyre, Democrat of New Hampshire, is co-chairman of that commission. Senator, what have you and your commission found out thus far? For instance, is all paperwork bad?

Sen. THOMAS McINTYRE: No, Jim, of course it isn`t. Much of it is very necessary. And I want to say a word in defense of the bureaucrats, too, because not all the bureaucrats are bad. But there does seem to be a great deal of asking too many questions. I can only think on the OSHA that there was about three paragraphs -- about a page -- defining what an exit was. So there`s a great deal of overreaching, and we`ve been very fortunate in getting to work at this and having results much better than we ever anticipated on the commission.

LEHRER: All right. I want to talk about that in a moment, but first of all, can you define how serious the problem is? We`ve given a lot of statistics tonight, we`ve heard two particular stories. From your overview position, how bad is it?

McINTYRE: I think the problem is very bad, and it`s so bad that we on the Paperwork Commission sometimes are concerned whether we can ever get a handle on it. But I think in the last two or three months we`ve been breaking through, and there`s some fine work by the staff on that commission.

LEHRER: Give me a for instance.

McINTYRE: Mr. Terry in the big business. Now, I first encountered this on the streets of New Hampshire when the little businessman started talking about it and coming down here on Saturdays and Sundays to fill out these forms. So it is a problem that needs a lot of attention, and I think the biggest thing that`s happened not only in the Ford administration, but the Carter administration, along with the Congress itself -- is an awareness of this problem and that we`ve got to do something about curbing it.

LEHRER: You said that your commission has done some things, you`ve made some recommendations. What are they, Senator?

McINTYRE: First of all, we`ve come out with two reports here, the OSHA and the ERISA report, and then we`re coming out with the...

LEHRER: The ERISA, of course, has to do with pensions.

McINTYRE: That`s right. And we`re coming out with the Environmental Protection report. All these reports are good, solid work and are being accepted by the agencies involved. Now, as far as I`m concerned, I`ve just recently introduced a bill which I think will pass, called the Reduction Paperwork Bill, and it`s built on our experience with ERISA. This will simply say to the President, "Please, Mr. President, take the advice of Congress and don`t let this law go into effect -- not immediately or thirty days, but give it ninety days, in order for the bureaucrats to have their time in filling out the various regulations required." You see, in ERISA our experience shows that this was dumped on Labor and dumped on IRS so fast that they practically ruined the thing to begin with from the very first form they sent out.

LEHRER: Senator, what about the Congress itself? They`re a big offender in creating paperwork, aren`t they? Have you been able to make any inroads there?

McINTYRE: Yes, Congress is the principal culprit, aided and abetted by the bureaucracy. And of course I want to say this: that we in Congress are trying to do something about this problem. Now, with all due respect to our good friend the Mayor Angelo down there in Texas, he ought to be more aware of letting us know about these complaints. If he would get along with the rest of the people in this country and get in to their Congressmen and make a full awareness of the burdens that are being thrust upon him, we would get a much bigger green light on trying to enact some good legislation to clean it up.

LEHRER: All right, but you feel rather hopeful in a general way that something can be done?

McINTYRE: I think that we`re making progress on a very difficult problem, and I would say to the mayors and other people of this country, please let your Congressmen and Senators know about how you`re suffering under this burden.

LEHRER: All right, Senator. Thank you. All those reports due at the White House yesterday from the cabinet departments will eventually find their way to the desk of Joseph Duncan. Mr. Duncan is a Deputy Associate Director of the Office of Management and Budget. First of all, Mr. Duncan, what are you going to do with all these reports?

JOSEPH DUNCAN: Of course, the first task that we have starting today is to prepare a summary of what all the departments are going to do for the President so that he can see the sum total effect of his request.

LEHRE R: All right. Then do you have the authority to go back to a particular cabinet officer and say, "Hey, this isn`t enough. We need a better recommendation," or whatever?

DUNCAN: That is of course correct. The Director of OMB, Bert Lance, has stated several times in public that he`s very serious about reducing paperwork and he has instructed my office to be very diligent in pursuing reports that are presented by the departments and we will be going back to those that are deficient. I have looked over a few of the ones that came in early, and I would say that in general they represent rather aggressive tendencies on the parts of the departments to tackle the problem. I think this is, as the Senator has indicated, a very serious concern within the bureaucracy as well as within the Congress.

LEHRER: Mr. Duncan, when this thing was first suggested by the President there was some resistance on the part of cabinet people and within the bureaucracy generally that this was an impossible task.

Is this reflected in any way in what you`ve seen so far in these reports, or are they getting with it?

DUNCAN: I have not seen all the reports, but I have not seen one report which says, "We can`t do anything, Mr. President." All of them have said, "This is what we intend to do...." Now, whether it`s enough to meet the President`s objectives we`ll see when we summarize the whole report.

LEHRER: Have you been told, by Mr. Lance or by the President, directly or indirectly, exactly what the goal is? What do you want these people to do - - have you set a percentage, or what?

DUNCAN: As you perhaps know, President Ford did set an across the-board percentage reduction in the number of forms last year. One of the differences that President Carter has taken is, he has not said to the cabinet, "My goal is (blank)." He has asked each cabinet and agency head to tell him, the President, what they can achieve in their department in the balance of this fiscal year. So in effect what will happen is that we`ll add up all of the targets set by the departments and see what that means overall, and if the President doesn`t think that`s enough he may go back- and say they should do some more. But my preliminary reading is that most of the departments are pretty serious about what they`re proposing.

LEHRER: Mr. Duncan, of course before you got saddled with this particular paperwork problem you were in charge of the statistics division of OMB, which is gathering information. Do you see a conflict there -- can you get the right kind of information that you need and still eliminate paperwork?

DUNCAN: My office has had that conflict since the Federal Reports Act was passed in 1942. We are responsible for statistical policy; that is, making certain that there is good quality information upon which to make public policy. We want to make sure, for example, that the national income accounts measure how well the economy is performing -- that`s essential to everybody, including business and government. At the same time, we have had responsibility for minimizing reporting burden and eliminating duplication to the extent that we can. Now, I think it`s a healthy tension to, on the one hand, be concerned about keeping the reporting burden low while you`re trying to get the adequate information; so we balance these things in our normal, routine way.

LEHRER: Thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: Yes, I`d like to ask if this problem is uniformly bad across government. Mayor Angelo in Dallas, do you find that there are particular bureaus or departments or agencies that are worse offenders than others?

ANGELO: I think we`ve probably had more trouble with EPA and EEOC -- maybe with the Justice Department, on the Voting Rights Act -- than with any of the others.

MacNEIL: Do the different departments have different personalities in their form filling and their form drafting, and so on? Are some clearer and easier and more straightforward and more economical than others?

ANGELO: I`m afraid I couldn`t say that any of them were, no.

MacNEIL: You could not. Do you have a sense, Mr. Terry, in the motorcar industry, of some departments or agencies doing this better or worse than others?

TERRY: Oh, yes. I think there`s a different philosophy of regulation. As I was saying earlier, I think it makes a great deal of difference whether or not the regulators feel that everything has got to be proven in writing and covered in writing before anything can be done. That makes a big difference in your operations. If you can operate the way you want to as long as you`ve got to produce the result but have freedom in your operations, it`s a great deal easier and you can do a lot better job .

MacNEIL: Are you saying that the mind-set, or the psychology, of an agency can be different from one agency to another and you really notice that?

TERRY: Very different.

MacNEIL: Which agency would you say is more nit-picking and negative in its approach than another?

TERRY: I wouldn`t like to use the term "negative," but it`s the philosophy of regulation; it is a bureaucratic way versus a get-things done way. And the bureaucratic way is exemplified by the Environmental Protection Agency and the way they handle the regulation of emissions; and more the get- things-done way is the Department of Transportation, or NHTSA way.

MacNEIL: Senator, has your investigation turned up substantial differences in philosophy and attitude that really make a difference in this paperwork business?

McINTYRE: I can understand Mr. Terry`s difficulty because EPA does bear pretty heavily on the automotive industry, but I believe it`s more the task that`s set before the particular department of government. HEW, of course, gives a lot of trouble filling out their forms; and there`s nobody quite as bad about this time of year, when you pick up your income tax report, as the IRS. No, I don`t think it`s so much the attitude of the particular department, I just think it`s the job they`re trying to do.

MacNEIL: Mr. Duncan, does the bulk of this material required by the federal government, apart from obvious things like statistics which you amass and use currently, actually get read by anybody or does it get just stored away in case a case comes up, for future reference?

DUNCAN: I would say that the bulk of the information is used one way or another. There are some problems, however, in the way it`s used. There is a growing tendency, when a department or agency has a responsibility to regulate an area, to assume that by requiring everybody to complete a very complex form that that will take the place of selective enforcement. We have worked with a number of the agencies to see if we can`t introduce sampling, for example of reports rather than requiring everybody in every program to submit every bit of information about every action, to use a sampling procedure, a statistical technique. It gives equally reliable results, and if you combine that with vigorous enforcement when complaints arrive you can achieve the same regulation result as requiring everyone to complete a complex form. There are some people, however, who are uneasy about that approach. For example, we find in some of the areas that labor unions want to make certain that minimum wages are paid, and they desire to have every employer file regular reports so that they, the unions, can investigate those easily as opposed to going through some legal process to acquire the information from the firm.

MacNEIL: And not everybody`s happy with the way the unemployment statistics, for instance, are amassed by a sampling technique rather than a direct reporting in from unemployment offices, or whatever.

DUNCAN: Yes, there are a couple of problems there. Of course, it would be rather onerous on the American public if we asked every person every month, "Are you employed, and if not, why not?" A sampling procedure does give you a good estimate of national unemployment rates. The controversy over the local employment service is that we use a sample at the national level and we obtain accurate measures at the level of states; we do not obtain through that sample, because it`s not large enough, accurate measures for every month are estimated through a standard procedure that uses as one input the employment service data. Now, since there are different laws for unemployment compensation in different states, if you did not require a uniform procedure you would have different unemployment rates in different areas because of their coverage. When we impose a standard from the federal level in terms of procedure, the local areas get upset because it may raise the level that they have otherwise calculated.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Mr. Angelo, let me ask you, do you feel any better about the paperwork problem after hearing what Senator McIntyre and Mr. Duncan have had to say?

ANGELO: First let me say quickly that I was unfair a moment ago in saying that all of them were the same. We`ve had very excellent relationships on a businesslike basis with the FAA, and I wanted to mention that. I do think it`s encouraging that Senator McIntyre `s committee is coming up with some positive approaches to it. I think it`s good that government at all levels is committed to doing something about it. It`s such a serious problem that I`m confident something will be done.

LEHRER: How do you feel, Mr. Terry? Are you leaving tonight a little more hopeful than you were when you came?

TERRY: I certainly am. I`m delighted that Congress and the President are interested in this and are going to do something about it, and I`m sure that things will be done. And when we`re talking about one agency versus another, often it is a matter of the law itself that was passed which governs some how the regulations are carried out, and it also is a matter of how difficult it may be to measure the performance. And so we talk about these two agencies, that has to be taken into account. But still, when you get all done, I think when you have paperwork requirements before you start the design and then during the testing of the design and then after you finish the design, that you can go back and look at the whole situation and say, "Look, we`re doing this thing three times and we`re requiring all kinds of paperwork proof at every stage of the game when really all we need is the proof of the pudding, after the pudding is finished." And I`m sure that after you get to that point simplifications -- big simplifications, and big savings -- can be accomplished.

LEHRER: Senator, aren`t there still many, many political hurdles to overcome? Everybody`s against paperwork in principle, but we`ve heard many examples now -- Mr. Duncan mentioned, for instance, the desire of labor unions for people to report; I`m sure environmentalists want Mr. Terry and the auto makers to report. There are a lot of conflicting things still to be resolved that don`t have anything to do with paperwork itself.

McINTYRE: There`s no doubt about the fact that we`re in the performance of government, and we have to have this information. But the fact of the matter is that we have gone overboard, as I said, and asking too many questions, on duplication. And one thing, Jim, that`s not being done: you`ve heard about the President, you`ve heard about the Congress; I urge the states to get involved in this. Several states have paperwork commissions, but there`s a lot of duplication; a lot of this onerous burden comes from out of our states.

LEHRER: You said a while ago that you were very hopeful that something was going to be done. Mr. Angelo and Mr. Terry have just said, "Right on!" to you. Can you give us some kind of calendar?

McINTYRE: All right. Let me give you an idea what the Paperwork Commission would be bragging about. The Commission has now made 390 recommendations to government agencies, of which ninety five have been approved, have been taken in. In other words, the bureaucrats have said, "Okay, you`ve got something. We`ll change it." Here`s the 1040A that`s coming in. It takes a college man to understand these instructions, but this year we`ve been able to get the...

LEHRER: You need an advanced degree.

McINTYRE: (Laughing.) We`ve been able to get the farmers` report next year settled down to something very, very simple, which will be a little bit of help. Progress is being made, but I am not underestimating the difficulty of the overall monolithic job.

LEHRER: All right, thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: Thank you, gentlemen in Washington. Good night, Jim. Thank you, Mayor Angelo in Dallas. And thank you, Mr. Terry. Jim Lehrer and I will be back on Monday evening. I`m Robert MacNeil. Good night.