President Trump’s FY 2018 budget request may be DOA in Congress, but it nonetheless offers critical insight into how he expects to pay for his border wall, increase defense spending, offer up a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan, and carry out his other pet projects, all while cutting corporate taxes. The bottom line is that he intends to eliminate some public programs and rob many others, and give that money to private corporations. The Trump budget proposal to slash funding for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) compared to the FY 2016 appropriations is a perfect example, although he’s proposed similarly drastic cuts, unfortunately, to many other non-defense programs in the budget.

While OSHA would suffer less drastic cuts than some other agencies, the targeted precision of these cuts—focused squarely on programs with such direct positive effects for workers—disproves Trump’s claim to be …

Yesterday, ten distinguished law professors, all of them CPR Member Scholars writing in their individual capacities, filed an amicus brief in support of a lawsuit brought by Public Citizen, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and the Communication Workers of America challenging as illegal and unconstitutional the Trump administration’s Executive Order 13771. The order requires agencies to identify at least two existing rules to repeal for every new one they seek to issue and to ensure that the money companies would save by not having to comply with the two health, safety, environmental, or other regulations would fully offset the compliance costs associated with the new rule.

The goal of the amicus brief is to further elucidate the “fundamental principles of administrative law and policy” that undergird the legal arguments raised in the lawsuit. To do this, it traces in painstaking detail the history of U …

From the safety of Air Force One en route from Tel Aviv to Rome, President Trump dropped his FY 2018 budget on Washington, D.C., and sent OMB Director Mick Mulvaney to run point on the ground. They like to talk about it as a "hard power" budget. What they don't like to talk about are the consequences of unleashing such firepower on the American public.

Make no mistake about it, this budget is the realization of several decades' travail by small-government conservatives. As Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, famously put it, they want to shrink the federal government to the size that they can drown it in a bathtub. So when you hear President Trump and his surrogates pivot from "hard power" to expressing their heartfelt concerns for taxpayers first, think about where that idea comes from. Their messaging is rooted not …

Originally published on The Regulatory Review by CPR Member Scholar William Funk.

Professor Kent Barnett recently opined in The Regulatory Review that formal rulemaking really is not that bad and may actually be a good thing in certain circumstances. His argument deserves closer review because the proposed Regulatory Accountability Act (RAA) would require the equivalent of formal rulemaking—or what the bill calls a "public hearing." Barnett may well be right to suggest that in some situations the costs of formal rulemaking could be justified, but he could not be more wrong to argue that the circumstances that would trigger formal rulemaking under the RAA are among those situations.

As Barnett acknowledges, the U.S. Supreme Court, scholars, policy makers, and other interested parties all have condemned formal rulemaking. Why? Because formal rulemaking utilizes a judicial, trial-like procedure to adopt rules that are legislative, not adjudicative, in …

Today, 27 Member Scholars of the Center for Progressive Reform, leading academics who specialize in administrative law and regulatory policy, submitted a letter to Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson and Ranking Member Claire McCaskill outlining their serious concerns with the Senate Regulatory Accountability Act. That bill is among several aimed at undermining our system of regulatory safeguards that are set to be marked up by the committee at its business meeting on Wednesday. Others set to be marked up include the Senate REINS Act and the Senate Small Business Regulatory Flexibility Improvement Act. 

In the letter, CPR Member Scholars identified seven troubling aspects of the bill:

• A requirement for a trial-like, adversarial hearing for many "major" rules and all "high-impact" rules that will likely lead to inefficient and undemocratic rulemaking;  
• A vague and misplaced requirement that agencies choose the most "cost-effective" regulatory …

CPR Member Scholars continue to make their voices heard on the nation’s opinion pages. You can always review the latest and greatest pieces on our op-eds page, but here’s a roundup from the last few weeks to save you a couple clicks.

Two CPR Member Scholars had pieces in The American Prospect in mid-April. Tom McGarity called out the right wing’s on-again, off-again allegiance to states’ rights in "Trumping State Regulators and Juries." McGarity writes, “Conversations about how progressive states should resist regressive Trump administration policies and sidestep Republican control of Congress often ignore the elephant in the room—the power of the federal government to preempt state regulations and even the ability of victims of corporate abuse to seek relief in state courts.” The right wing has been supportive of regulatory preemption for some time now, its decades’ long use of states’ rights …

The U.S. government obviously isn't going to be taking a global leadership role regarding climate change, not for the next four years. At one time, that would have been the end of the story: the only way to accomplish anything internationally was through national governments. But we live in a different world today, and there are other channels for international action against climate change. Today, transnational networks of state and local governments, private firms, and NGOs are actively addressing climate change and other environmental problems, with or without the help of their national governments.

The Under2 MOU is a great example outside of the formal framework of international law. Here are the key facts:

The Under2 Coalition is a diverse group of governments around the world who set ambitious targets to combat climate change. Central to the Under2 MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) is an agreement …

Due to the blinders of his fossil fuel dream team and the industry's myths denying climate change (#ExxonKnew), President Donald Trump seems once again on the verge of withdrawing from the Paris climate change accord. That's a fool's errand.

Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement would be a major blow to U.S. standing and leadership in the world. It would also slow our country's efforts to do our part in avoiding catastrophic climate change. So why is he even considering a trip down this dangerous road?

At the significant cost of further tarnishing the United States' image abroad, Trump gets to keep a political promise and make dubious noise about aiding the domestic coal industry. But like so many other Trump actions, its rhetorical impacts (both positive and negative) will be significant, but the practical impacts will be substantially muted by systemic checks …