There is a degree of irony in the coinciding occurrence of former President Jimmy Carter’s decline in health and the mushroom cloud looming over East Palestine, Ohio. Carter, whose legacy is usually discussed in terms of his post-presidential humanitarian work, was responsible for putting the United States on the track — no pun intended — of widespread deregulation that we are still traveling down.
As a response to the catastrophic derailment in East Palestine, U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, has said that he will work to impose stronger regulations on trains responsible for transporting toxic chemicals. Greater regulatory power could still exist in sectors like transportation and infrastructure, but it would require government leaders to exercise their political agency and combat corporate influence in government.
The destruction of the federal government’s regulatory power is a bipartisan effort that has been continued by every presidential administration since Carter. Every president since is guilty of bringing us to the apocalyptic sight in East Palestine. People generally understand that politicians do the bidding for corporations but don’t understand how the federal government outsources its responsibilities to the private sector. Corporations get to decide their own safety standards when the federal government does not regulate them, and our safety is never prioritized over their profits.
While Ronald Reagan and Reaganomics are often thought of as the founders of American deregulation, the credit should really be attributed to Carter. He was the first to embark on a mission of mass deregulation. During his four years as president, Carter deregulated several major industries, including trucking and airlines. The libertarian think tank Foundation for Economic Education hailed Carter as being a better president than conservatives usually concede, claiming his “most lasting legacy is as the Great Deregulator.” His attempt to bolster the economy through decreased government oversight was an utter failure, contributing to Reagan and his stagflation craze and obliterating Carter in his 1980 reelection campaign.
The Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations continued Carter’s deregulation agenda with devotion. Their cabinet appointments reflected this undying belief in laissez-faire economics — The U.S. Department of the Interior was headed by James Watt, the head of a conservative organization who made a name for himself by suing the federal government on behalf of businesses. Anne Gorsuch, the mother of current Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, promised not to enforce regulations on an oil refinery as director of The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The Bush administration dedicated itself to blocking the regulation of mutual and hedge funds. Bill Clinton, who ran on the repudiation of Reaganism, continued the withering away of corporate regulation. Clinton deregulated banks and exempted credit swaps from regulation. Most famously, Clinton signed the Financial Services Modernization Act in 1999, repealing the New Deal-era Glass-Steagall Act, an act that separated financial and investment banking. He also deregulated cable and radio and was a champion of free trade.
The actions of Bush and Clinton helped cause perhaps the most obvious result of America’s deregulatory trend — the financial crisis of 2007-2008. Barack Obama came to power in 2008, and we were able to rest easy — or so we thought. He had in front of him a golden opportunity, with financial executives on their knees and Obama in the position to decide the terms of any potential bailouts. But rather than delivering broad regulation to the financial sector, he helped them up and walked away.
Lastly, there’s Donald Trump, whose environmental deregulation is enough to deem him worthy of capital punishment. In championing deregulation, Trump slashed liquidity regulations, which helped cause the recent collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank.
All of these cases demonstrate the bipartisan consensus on slashing regulation across a variety of industries. There are still exceptions to the rule of a deregulatory trend. Bush Sr. signed the Clean Air Act in 1990, and Obama increased the number of regulations for firearm vendors, but the overall trend of deregulation is indisputable. Fighting the push by corporate influences to deregulate will be hard — politicians respond to money, and corporations have plenty in their bank accounts. Ironically, a lack of campaign finance regulation limits the ability to thwart lobbying power by major business interests.
Despite catastrophe after catastrophe — the train derailment in East Palestine, the Flint water crisis, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and more — the American public continues to complain about the evils of “big government.” In large part due to the media, regulation is seen as a bad word by most people. There needs to be a more public fight in defense of regulation, and we need a voice to dispel the notion that it hurts the economy. It hurts the pocketbooks of the wealthy but protects everyone else.
Nathan Sommer is a sophomore majoring in history.