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COPYRIGHT 2001 The Dallas Morning News
Byline: Jim Landers
Feb. 27--WASHINGTON--From keyboards to clothes washers, from air conditioners to diesel fuel, the battle lines are drawn.
In one of his first acts on Inauguration Day, President Bush froze new rules and regulations for those products as well as thousands of other freshly minted mandates from the departing Clinton administration -- some just hours old.
Business boosters hailed the move as a decisive blow against government interference. Consumer groups labeled it an invitation for shabby goods and services. Both exaggerated.
But one thing is clear: Even before he spent his first night in the White House, Mr. Bush had sounded the opening bell for a major new round in an old fight: who sets the rules covering vast areas of American life and how those rules are enforced.
Talk of tax cuts or missile defenses may grab headlines, but the maze of regulations streaming from federal agencies has a broader day-to-day impact. Now the scramble is on to undo many of the most recently issued ones.
"Clinton was a champion regulator," says Wendy Gramm, director of regulatory studies at George Mason University's Mercatus Center. And he left "a glass slipper behind that doesn't necessarily fit all."
The old administration's "Cinderella" officials in their final three months pumped a record 25,605 pages of rules, regulations and other actions into the Federal Register -- a step routinely...
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