Search for Common Ground, a D.C. nonprofit, has spent much of the past decade working to resolve international conflicts in bullet-riddled places such as Rwanda and Macedonia. Now comes the real test of the group's mediation skills: Washington party politics.
The conflict resolution group has become involved in mediating the controversy over President Bush's "faith-based" social services proposal.
"The press and the public discussion of this issue have emphasized the problems people have with the faith-based initiative," said SFCG spokesman Gil Kulick. "But both sides agree that there is an important role for church groups to play in the provision of social services . . . and therefore would like to find common ground whereby services could be provided in a way that would neither blur church-state lines nor restrict the scope of activities of religious organizations."
At the urging of Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), the organization has convened a working group of about 30 people, headed by Santorum's 1994 Senate race opponent, former senator Harris Wofford. (Hey, this group is good at bringing enemies together.) The group includes representatives from across the organizational spectrum, including the American Muslim Council, Teen Challenge, the NAACP, Evangelicals for Social Action, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and the Progressive Policy Institute. Members held their first meeting in mid-June and will continue meeting once a month through the end of the year.
The head of the North Dakota Consensus Council, a group that brings citizens together on controversial issues facing the state legislature, will serve as the facilitator at the gatherings. "The technique here is at the outset to have the parties state very clearly what they disagree about. Having put that on the table and made it clear, they then look at the interests they have in common," said Kulick.
The group will release a report at the end of deliberations.
RULES, GLORIOUS RULES: And you thought trying not to run afoul of the Ten Commandments was difficult? Try ten thousand.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute recently published a new edition of "Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Policymaker's Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State," by adjunct scholar and Cato Institute scholar, Clyde Wayne Crews Jr.
Some highlights:
• Pages are proliferating in the Federal Register. In 2000, the Register had 74,258 pages, a 4.3 percent increase over 1999 and the highest count since the Carter years.
• The top five rule-producing agencies, in order: Department of Transportation; Department of the Treasury; Environmental Protection Agency; Department of the Interior; Department of Commerce.
• Since 1994, the year the GOP won control of Congress, more than 28,000 final rules have been issued. Still, the number of proposed and final rules published in 2000 (6,949) was lower than any other year in the past decade.
• The cost of implementing regulations in 2000 was $788 billion, outpacing 1999 pretax corporate profits and more than double the 1998 gross national product of Mexico, Crews estimates.
"One needn't waste time blaming agencies for emphasizing the very regulating they were set up to do in the first place. Better to point the finger at Congress," Crews wrote. His suggested reform: "require Congress to vote on agencies' final rules before they are binding on the public."
THINKING ABOUT REFORM: Cramming for Thursday's big showdown in the House on campaign finance reform? Then scurry over to the Brookings Institution today to hear some smart talk by four big thinkers on money and politics.
Tank town's dynamic duo on governmental reform, Thomas Mann of Brookings and Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, are on the panel. So are Anthony Corrado, a political scientist at Colby College and author of "Paying for President," and Trevor Potter, former chairman of the Federal Election Commission and co-author with Mann and Corrado of "The New Campaign Finance Sourcebook."
Those who can't make it in person but have the right computer stuff can watch a webcast of the forum (go to the tank's home page and follow the prompts). You might also want to check out the cool campaign finance page at www.brookings.edu/ campaignfinance. The forum runs from 9:30 a.m. through 11 a.m. in the tank's Falk Auditorium.
PEOPLE: The Council on Foreign Relations has picked up Stephen Sestanovich, Clinton administration ambassador at large for the former Soviet Union, as senior fellow for Russian and Eurasian studies. He plans to write about the increased tensions between the United States and Russia during the Clinton administration.
Lawrence Whitman has joined the Heritage Foundation as director of the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies. He replaces Angela Antonelli, President Bush's nominee for assistant secretary of the interior for policy, management and budget. Lawrence was a senior economist at the congressional Joint Economic Committee, working on budget, tax, financial, technology and related issues.
The Mercatus Center at George Mason University has hired Brian Mannix as a senior research fellow in the Regulatory Studies Program. Mannix was Virginia deputy secretary of natural resources under Govs. George Allen and James S. Gilmore III and is a former managing editor of Regulation magazine.
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