The Interstate Commerce Commission deserves every one of its superlatives: it is the oldest and largest of the federal regulatory agencies and the most ineffective. Overseeing some 18,000 companies involved in transport by truck, rail, waterway and pipeline, the ICC regulates industries that account for 20% of the gross national product.
But over an 82-year history, its guiding Interstate Commerce Act has become clotted with 200 amendments that run for 425 pages. Johnson Administration economists, testifying in Senate hearings last summer, argued that the ICC was fated to be "a dead hand on industry"...
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