President-elect Ronald Reagan faces a long agenda of seemingly insurmountable challenges, but none is likely to test his administrative. legislative or diplomatic skills as much as taming the federal bureaucracy. The depth and complexity of this case of authority exceeding reason and compassion is never illustrated better than by a U.S. Supreme Court decision issued earlier this month. In that decision, the court ruled that the government is free to force polluters to meet government standards regardless of the economic consequences for the company if it complies. In the 8-0 decision. the high court reversed a lower court ruling which said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency must take into account a company’s ability to afford the “best practicable control technology” for water pollution. Justice Byron White said, the “plain language of the (water pollution) statute does not support the position taken by the Court of Appeals. “Congress.” White said. “anticipated that the 1977 economic hardship and plant closings. The question is not what a court thinks is generally appropriate to the regulatory process; it is what Congress intended for these regulations.” If the law says that as plainly as Justice White contends it does. it cries out for amendment. In a society as advanced as ours, it is impossible to govern solely through Congress. To make thingswork, Congress must prescribe its general intent and delegate the day-t0day implementation of the intent to the regulatory agencies and the executive branch. And although legislative intent is generally commendable (such as elimination of environmental pollution). implementation tends to be despicable. Bureaucracies and bureaucrats seldom are blessed with a sense of priorities or understanding of the world beyond their personal field of expertise and their understandable passion for perpetuating and enhancing their positions in the great federal pecking order. in that rarified pinnacle of raw power over the fate of so many, it’s no surprise to see the confusion of priorities exemplified by the recent Supreme Court decision. So far as the law is concerned. installing the hardware which has struck the fancy of an EPAbureaucrat is more important than keeping a plant open or even cleaning up pollution. because the point seems to have become the hardware and not what that hardware is intended to do. The arrogance of those in the upper reaches of that hierarchy who get smitten with a diety complex is no stranger to us in the Utah Valley. Such is the stuff of the infamous memo from William Drayton Jr., assistant administrator for planning and management in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to EPA Chief Douglas Costle. “A rational policy,” Drayton wrote. “would allow the (steel) industry to generally decrease in size. to inaugurate programs to provide transitional relief to displaced workers and depressed communities and to provide incentives for diverting our resources to more promising industries.” The first question obviously is where does he get off discussing charting the entire economic course of the nation when his job is cleaning up the environment’? Secondly and more to the point in this country. shouldn’t the survival of an industry depend on how it fares in free market competition rather than on the caprices of a few public hirelings who think imposition of their views on the country is more important than keeping a plant open that employs people and produces something the country needs? For Reagan, thank heaven, the answers to those questions are Nowhere” and “Yes.” We in Utah can be equally thankful that Republican control of the Senate has netted Jake Gam the chairmanship of the Senate appropriations subcommittee which oversees the EPA budget. Unraveling that bureaucracy and lending some sense of over-all perspective to it will be no easy-job. But the distortions of priority and common sense illustrated by the court ruling and the infamous memo make it obvious that this long, hard job has to start now.