(FORTUNE Magazine) – Let's see. First there was no regulation. Then there was regulation. Then, beginning in the Carter years and accelerating under Reagan, there was deregulation. Now there is reregulation. Reregulation? This implausible term does not appear in the unabridged Random House Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1987. But in the year just ended, ''reregulation'' turned up in 353 news stories and articles lurking in the mighty Nexis database, so somebody out there must be babbling about it. The regulators are again on the march. During the 1980s, the head count of the federal regulatory agencies declined by 13%, but since 1989, it has rebounded by more than 15%. Combined head count of the agencies today: a record 122,400. The Federal Register, where regulatory output gets chronicled in numbing detail, is also getting fatter. Last year it had 68,000 pages, up from 55,000 in 1988 (a disparity said to have triggered George's State-of-the- Union demand for a 90-day moratorium on regs ''that could hinder growth''). What gives? Here is a theory. Always in the business of demonstrating its lovable concern for the people, Congress cannot today (because of budgetary constraints) do much for them via federally administered programs. What it can do is create programs requiring more from business. So it vastly expands the Clean Air Act, now an 800-page document whose operational meaning the Environmental Protection Agency will be elucidating in the Federal Register for years. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will similarly fatten the Register when it tries to figure out the Americans With Disabilities Act. Dereregulation seems years away.