Capitol Hill

The 2008 race for the White House is in full swing, and the first debate among Democrats running for president will be April 26 at South Carolina State University, Orangeburg. This will be the opening bell for what promises to be one of the more extraordinary presidential election campaigns in modern history.

For starters, this will be a rare open-field race because 2008 will be the first presidential election year since 1928 in which neither the incumbent president nor vice president will be a candidate during any part of the process. And it is likely that for the first time several Republican and Democratic candidates will raise more than $100 million for their respective primary campaigns.

Competition among Democratic candidates is intensified by history that suggests it is the Democrats' turn to recapture the White House. Only once during the past 50 years has a political party won a third consecutive four-year presidential term. This happened in 1988 with the election of former President George H.W. Bush.

His nomination as the Republican candidate in 1988 also reflected a Republican Party tendency during its nominating process to opt for front-runners and people who have run before. Another example is former Sen. Bob Dole (R) in 1996. But the Republican Party must attract independent voters it lost during the 2006 election, and the competition has intensified among its candidates, as well.

The Republican National Convention will be held Sept. 1-4, 2008, in Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Democrats convene Aug. 25-28, 2008, in Denver. They will meet before the Republicans because the "out" party traditionally goes first.

Regulatory policy

The next president will control the White House and its regulatory policies. This will affect the amount and complexity of regulations with which NRCA members must contend to do business.

A positive example of this is when President George W. Bush succeeded former President Bill Clinton on Jan. 31, 2001, and Bush's new regulatory policy brought relief to NRCA members. The Clinton administration had finalized a record 29,000 pages of new regulations during its final 90 days, and the most significant was the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's ergonomics standard. Bush issued a Regulatory Review Plan to freeze many of those regulations and, working with Congress, repealed the ergonomics standard.

The president's regulatory policy is implemented by the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). Bush's first OIRA administrator required agencies to use realistic cost-benefit analyses and risk assessments when writing new regulations, and perhaps this helps explain why his current nominee for the post is being opposed by Senate Democrats who traditionally have been skeptical of these methodologies. The next president will establish new regulatory policy, and the next OIRA administrator will be the key to ensuring federal agencies follow the policy.

Executive branch

Federal agencies pursue administration goals because presidents have the power to fill more than 3,000 political positions in the executive branch, 600 of which require Senate confirmation. Beginning with Cabinet secretaries, these positions are in every agency to ensure the administration's policies are being carried out, and many of these policies affect regulations that apply to the roofing industry.

NRCA routinely must deal with a variety of programs administered by the U.S. Department of Labor and OSHA. For example, NRCA has spent years of negotiations to prevent asphalt fumes from erroneously being labeled "carcinogenic" by OSHA and its adjunct agency, the National Institute for Occupational Safety. NRCA also has negotiated in the past to improve regulations from the Department of Transportation regarding asphalt tankers and the Environmental Protection Agency and OSHA concerning asbestos.

The unknown

The 2008 presidential election is on, and the person inaugurated Jan. 31, 2009, will dictate regulatory policy affecting NRCA members. Although Congress has input with agencies through oversight hearings and appropriations, the White House and executive branch generate federal regulations. Thus, regulatory policy will be a key determinant when NRCA's political action committee, ROOFPAC, ultimately selects a presidential candidate to support.

Craig S. Brightup is NRCA's vice president of government relations.