When your public approval rating has hovered at or below 20 percent for the last several years, maybe the last thing you should be doing is maligning other government institutions.  That didn’t stop a group of Senators from spending several hours doing just that today during a joint hearing involving the Senate Budget and Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committees.  The joint hearing was nominally about a nonsense regulatory reform proposal called “regulatory budgeting” (for more on that, see here), but it quickly devolved into a no-holds-barred hate session directed at federal agency employees, as the upright and honorable members of the “world’s greatest deliberative body” repeatedly attacked the prevailing “culture” at agencies.

The term “culture” was repeated dozens of times throughout the hearing, as the conservative members of the committee waxed patronizingly about the need to change the “culture” at agencies.  The Republican Senators …

For decades, so-called regulatory “reformers” have backed up their sales pitches with the same basic promise:  Their goal is not to stop regulation per se but to promote smarter ones.  This promise, of course, was always a hollow one.  But it gave their myriad reform proposals—always involving some set of convoluted procedural or analytical requirements designed to surreptitiously sabotage the rulemaking process—some shred of legitimacy, while insulating the proponents against any public backlash that might follow from such cynical attacks on broadly popular public health, safety, and environmental programs.

If the real motivation behind the “regulatory reform” movement wasn’t clear before, then tomorrow’s hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs and Budget Committees on “regulatory budgets” ought to peel away the last of any lingering doubts.  The idea behind “regulatory budgeting” (or “regulatory pay-go,” as it is sometimes known) is that …

Unless you’re living under a rock or are a FIFA executive official being indicted for criminal conspiracy, you’ve no doubt heard by now that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has at long last released its final rule establishing a clear regulatory definition that, consistent with both the previous court decisions and the best available science, delineates which water systems are covered by the Clean Water Act.  The rule was included in a recent CPR Issue Alert, highlighting 13 essential regulatory actions that the Obama Administration should commit to completing during its remaining time in office.

The rule would seem to provide everything that conservative opponents of regulation would want: regulatory certainty and efficient use of agency funds (i.e., by preventing the EPA from having to undertake wasteful case-by-case analyses of which water bodies warrant federal protection).  Yet, it has been a lightning rod of …

The Competitive Enterprise Institute is out with the latest in a series of industry-friendly reports overcooking the supposed costs of regulation, while understating or simply ignoring the vast benefits to health, safety and the environment. Not surprisingly, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times were good enough to put the right-wing echo chamber in motion in its service.

A few quick thoughts: This report isn’t scholarship, it’s arithmetic advocacy—and it’s poor arithmetic at that.  The organization that sponsored the report is more concerned with advancing its political agenda of laissez faire government at all costs than it is with sound public policy. This report is meant to advance that agenda, rather than inform the ongoing debate over the U.S. regulatory system. After all, what good does it do to tally up the costs of regulation without providing an estimate of regulatory …

This morning, the House Judiciary Committee is holding a markup on the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act of 2015, or REINS Act (H.R. 427).  Even among the many extreme antiregulatory bills that Congress has considered this session, the REINS Act still stands out for its breathtaking audacity.  If enacted, this bill would block the most important environmental, safety, and public health regulations from taking effect unless Congress affirmatively approves them within the extraordinarily short period of 70 session days or legislative days.  It is not a stretch to say that many regulations that are now benefitting millions of Americans—such as those limiting lead in gasoline or requiring air bags in automobiles—would never have seen the light of day had the REINS Act been in place.  Versions of this bill have been introduced in both chambers of Congress over the last …

Background:  Tomorrow, the full House Judiciary Committee will be holding a markup of the H.R. 1759, the All Economic Regulations are Transparent Act of 2015 (ALERT Act), sponsored by Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Tex.).  The House of Representatives considered a similar bill during its last session.  (The hearing is also noteworthy, because the committee will be marking up H.R. 427, the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act of 2015, or REINS Act.  For more information on the REINS Act, see here.)

What the ALERT Act does:  The bill would impose a series of new burdensome reporting requirements on agencies and the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) regarding the progress and impacts of the agencies’ pending rulemakings.  Once a month, agencies would have to provide detailed information about any rules that they are working on, while OIRA would have to …

When it comes to public safeguards, industry never wants to talk about keeping people healthy and protecting the environment; they’d much rather have a conversation about how safeguards will cut into their profits — the costs in the cost-benefit equation.  Even on matters where Congress, by statute, has made the discussion of regulatory costs legally irrelevant or a matter of only secondary importance, you can rest assured that industry will still be there talking exclusively about costs.  That is largely what is at issue in Michigan v. Environmental Protection Agency, which is being argued today before the U.S. Supreme Court—another attempt by polluting industries to inject discussions of costs where they don’t belong.

But, for the EPA’s rule to limit mercury and other toxic pollutants from fossil-fueled power plants, the subject of the case, perhaps the most critical issue is the regulatory benefits …

In the run-up to this morning’s oral arguments before the Supreme Court on the Environmental Protection Agency’s rule to limit hazardous air pollutants from fossil-fueled power plants—and indeed throughout the oral arguments themselves—opponents repeatedly pointed out that the benefits of the rule in reducing mercury pollution were “only” between $4 million and $6 million.  Putting aside the ethically problematic question of trying to put a dollars-and-cents value on achieving improved public health and environmental protection, it is worth pondering this number and what it reveals about the significant methodological flaws that are endemic to cost-benefit analysis.  (For the record, this number is supposed to represent the “value” of lost earning potential of children that the rule would protect against IQ point degradations.  Do you see what I mean about ethically problematic?)

Opponents of the rule claim that this $4-million figure is the only …

Yesterday, the House Oversight Committee held a hearing on “Challenges Facing OIRA in Ensuring Transparency and Effective Rulemaking” that featured as its only witness the head of the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), Administrator Howard Shelanski.   Given that regulations are a huge source of consternation on the Hill, and the prominent role that OIRA plays in the federal regulatory apparatus, oversight hearings involving OIRA always have the potential for fireworks.  Despite this potential, these hearings—which take place once a year or so—tend to be pretty staid affairs with some mild grousing over a few key issues that are undoubtedly worthy of congressional attention—including the delays caused by OIRA’s unacceptably long rule reviews and OIRA’s semiannual tradition of issuing regulatory agendas behind schedule and/or at inconvenient times of the year (i.e., before major holidays).   Yesterday’s …