The latest version of a proposed federal regulatory reform act is full of new quirks and gimmicks, but at heart contains the same strategy as the faulty original: Stop government regulators by overwhelming them with piles of paperwork while inviting lobbyists to meddle with health and safety laws.

The first bill was killed in 1995; the one being heard today before the Senate’s Governmental Affairs Committee deserves the same treatment.

By requiring government agencies to review and justify every major existing regulation, the bill proposes to bury federal regulators under cost-benefit analyses, risk assessments and regulatory alternatives. Regulators that decide to do their real jobs rather than play the paperwork shuffle risk losing major tools for enforcing laws related health, safety and the environment.

The outcome is easy to see. A major air polluter tells the Environmental Protection Agency to back off on new regulations or it will sue to have EPA staffers spend the next six months doing a totally unnecessary cost-benefit analysis of the effects of lead exposure on children. Or, says Smokestack Inc., would you prefer to ease up on us?

When the original was defeated, Sen. Bill Cohen reminded his colleagues that though the public gripes, often accurately, about Washington red tape, the federal government must be free to provide basic services. “If another bacteria infects a city water system,” he said then, “the public is going to want to know, `Where is the EPA?’ … If there is an outbreak of contaminated meat, people will look to the Department of Agriculture for answers. The public wants smaller, less intrusive government. It also expects the government to perform a core set of functions promptly and effectively.”

The former senator’s observations have become more accurate with time, particularly in the area of food safety. Sen. Susan Collins, who sits on the Governmental Affairs Committee, certainly will hear testimony today about how increases in the amount of food imported to the United States demand rapid regulatory changes and improved oversight from the federal government. Under the bill, food inspectors would be stuck behind desks justifying clearly needed regulations rather than at dock warehouses, where they belong.

The current bill is not an improvement over the 1995 version, as supporters suggest. It is the same old, industry-written attack on the public that both Sens. Cohen and Olympia Snowe helped defeat. Its core remains an unworkable net-benefits clause, which demands that agencies assign a dollar value to lives saved through safety measures, to cleaner air and water and to pain and suffering avoided.

Many of the tinkerings in the new bill only make it worse: Peer review panels would be exempted from government “sunshine” laws; industry is invited to participate in the review process; university researchers could be excluded for fatuous reasons; agencies would be required to post federal register announcements for every risk assessment it even intends to conduct. For politicians who claim they want to streamline government, this bill should be poison.

Besides, all of this is unnecessary. Government regulations are already checked and double-checked by a large, well-paid body of government workers, collectively known as Congress. Last time we looked, it was empowered to rewrite bad laws. If a regulation is too much of a burden, change it. But stop beating on the system that guards the public’s health and safety.