I refer, of course, to the recent striking down by Congress of rules intended to reduce repetitive stress injuries in the workplace. With compliance costs estimated at anywhere from $5 billion to $100 billion, depending on who did the estimate, the ergonomics program may have been the Clinton administration's greatest affront to American business. But it wasn't the only one and, while its nullification should be celebrated, it should not be allowed to lead to complacency.

Created by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and 10 years in the making, the ergonomics program represented a scattergun approach to the problem of workers being injured by repeatedly performing the same task. By OSHA's own admission, 4.75 million small businesses would have been subject to the rules, 4.2 million of them employing fewer than 20 workers.

The workplace was defined so broadly that even home-based firms, where a single friend or relative labors a few days a week at data entry or bookkeeping, could have been affected. And business owners would have been required to spend from $250 to $1,000 a year per employee workstation just on prevention.

Whatever the price tag, the program was shaping up as a compliance nightmare. Reading snippets of it, you had to wonder if it wasn't the latest handiwork of Ira Magaziner, architect of that regulatory morass known as "Hillary's health care plan." But forget the bureaucratic silliness — the "MSD (musculoskeletal disorder) incidents," the "action triggers," the "quick fixes" — underlying it all was real economic inequity, the kind that can be fatal to a small business operating on razor-thin margins.

Consider: The rules would have covered injuries sustained outside the workplace — while playing golf or softball, for example — and then merely aggravated at work. Moreover, employers would have had to pay injured workers 90% of their pay for up to 90 days, while it was determined whether the employee could return to work; the comparable rate under Workman's Compensation is two-thirds of full pay.

Though the ergonomics package no longer is a problem, new rules governing the reporting of workplace injuries remain on the books, and small-business advocates say they will add substantially to business' red-tape burden unless amended. Also cause for alarm is a trio of new environmental regulations — governing watershed pollution, lead emissions and sulfur levels in diesel fuel — that figure to have a significant negative impact on certain small-business constituencies.

There are others as well, many of them so-called "midnight regulations" the Clinton White House attempted to sneak into effect in the period between the election and the Bush inauguration. It's a time-honored way for an administration to put its mark on the body bureaucratic one last time — think of a dog lifting its leg — and it should come as no surprise that in this, as in so many other things, the Clinton gang was particularly profligate.

A recent study by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Virginia found that President Clinton broke Jimmy Carter's 1980-81 record for the most pages published in the Federal Register during the post-election quarter: Clinton's post-election regulations filled 26,542 pages vs. 24,531 for Carter.

While this latest batch of midnight regulations are subject to congressional review (Congress has until approximately mid-2001 to review all rules submitted after July 13 of last year), small-business advocates in Washington say that few, if any, additional regulations will rise to the level of the ergonomic rules and be slapped down with a resolution of disapproval. But there are other remedies.

One of Andrew Card's first official acts as White House chief of staff was to direct agency heads to postpone for 60 days the effective date regulations that had been issued but not yet become effective. Those rules are subject to administrative review and withdrawal.

And not every regulation that took effect before Clinton vacated the White House is immune. The most notable example in this category is the "integrity and business ethics" standards intended to deny federal contracts to firms that have broken the law.

The rules were roundly derided by business as a sop to labor unions ("labor violations" are among the offenses not to be tolerated). The rules, which took effect Jan. 19, were suspended for six months, thanks to a ruling by the panel that reviews federal procurement regulations. It's expected that the Bush administration eventually will be able to withdraw the rules.

In cases where administrative or legislative remedies aren't available, there's always the law. Look for special interest groups that have been hit hard by a rule — often in the environmental area — to go to court hoping to prove a flaw in the rulemaking process.

But whatever becomes of the Clinton's midnight rules blitz, this much seems certain: The regulatory arm of the Bush administration will be less punitive.

"The Bush administration is going to focus more on compliance assistance, on a partnership with small business," says Karen Bosgraaf, manager of regulatory policy at the National Federation of Independent Business.