Consistent with his ongoing efforts to distinguish himself among the Republican presidential candidates as a serious “policy wonk,” Jeb Bush, “rolled out” his “regulatory reform” plan last week.  The sad truth, though, is that the plan contains little of what might be considered sober or intellectually rigorous.   Rather, it is simply a mishmash of warmed over ideas from candidate Mitt Romney’s 2012 regulatory reform plan and from the various antiregulatory bills that have been festering in Congress the last several years, all served on a wilted bed of misleading data, astounding leaps of logic, and outright falsehoods.

To see why this plan would be such a bad deal for the American people, consider the following 10 points:

1. It relies on unreliable or misleading empirical data. Jeb simply does what countless other regulatory opponents have done before him:  He attempts to create an alternative reality in which …

The new primary ozone standard of 70 parts per billion (ppb) is definitely a step in the right direction, but it has taken EPA far too long to make this much-needed change.

We should not forget, however, that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson sent a proposed standard of 65 ppb to the White House in August 2011, but was told explicitly by President Obama to withdraw it because the White House economists thought it would be too costly for business, despite the fact that this delay came at the expense of the health of vulnerable Americans.

The Supreme Court has held that the Clean Air Act prohibits EPA from taking such cost considerations into account when setting the standards, but that does not stop affected industries from railing against any protections the agency promulgates to protect public health.

We can expect the regulated industries to complain that a …

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush released a plan meant to make it harder for federal agencies to make rules that protect public health and the environment. That might help some big corporations. But it makes everyday Americans much less safe.

The idea is to jam up the federal rule making process with so many requirements that hardly anything important would get done. Safeguards that keep the air clear, the water clean, and the workplace safe would be put on the back burner. Bush’s plan would empower congressional members who do not believe in climate change to stall rules crafted by scientific experts in response to statutes that Congress has already passed, like the Clean Water and Air Acts. New rules meant to prevent another Wall Street meltdown would also be at risk. 

On top of that Bush would provide the White House (through OMB’s Office …

Today, the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee is holding a Hearing on legislation focused on the regulatory system entitled, "A Review of Regulatory Reform Proposals."

CPR Vice-President and Wake Forest University School of Law professor Sidney Shapiro will be testifying.

According to his testimony:

It is a good thing that Congress has directed agencies to issue regulations to achieve important social goals because these regulations have produced enormous benefits for the American people.¹ Consider the following:

• The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) estimates that regulatory benefits exceed regulatory costs by about 8 to 1 for significant regulations.² The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that the regulatory benefits of the Clean Air Act exceed costs by a 25-to-1 ratio.³  

• The failure to regulate some hazards related to the workplace, the environment, product safety, food safety, and more, and the failure …

The answer will surprise you.

What parts of the country benefit most from the series of new EPA rules addressing pollution from coal-fired power plants?  The answer is not what you think.

EPA does a thorough cost-benefit analysis of its regulations but the costs and benefits are aggregated at the national level. In a new paper, David Spence and David Adelman from the University of Texas break down these figures on a regional basis.  What they found may surprise you.  In fact, the areas benefitting the most are the very ones that rely most on coal.  The reason is simple.  Much of the benefit from reducing the use of coal comes in the form of health improvements — fewer heart attacks and deaths from respiratory disease, fewer asthma attacks.  These health improvements are mostly in the vicinity of the power plants.  So the same places that will have …

The essence of the argument that a new energy and environmental politics is needed is based on the idea that our traditional energy path (as well as its underlying assumptions) has outlived its useful life; the traditional energy narrative is stale. Cheap, but dirty, fossil fuel energy has played a significant role in contributing to economic growth and to the political authority of the United States for most of the 20^th century.  By the end of the century, however, the fundamental economic assumption of traditional energy policy has proven to be seriously flawed. Fortunately, a new narrative about a more democratic energy and environmental future can be constructed that can empower us to critically assess traditional policies as well as re-evaluate existing legal and political structures.

How, though, does a politics of a clean power future connect with democracy?  The central democratic principle is to promote …

Natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina,¹ Superstorm Sandy,² and the typhoon that devastated Fukushima,³ as well as technical weaknesses that caused the Northeast blackout in October 2003,⁴ and regulatory failures that ended California electric industry restructuring efforts⁵ share two commonalities.  First, they all affect the energy system at enormous costs in economic losses and in disrupted lives.⁶ Indeed, severe weather events are the leading source of electricity grid disturbances in the US with 679 widespread power outages between 2003 in 2012. Those outages have been estimated to cost the US economy between $18 and $33 billion each year during that decade.⁷ Second, the economic and social costs of such disasters are so significant because the centralized structure of electricity generation and distribution guarantees concentrated losses upon such occurrences. 

Consequently, as weather impacts continue and increase⁸ in severity and occurrence …

The New Push to Protect American Workers from the Conditions of the Marketplace 

In 1873, when Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner published their book, The Gilded Age, they satirized the greed, political corruption, and skewed distribution of wealth that pervaded the United States at the time. As during Twain’s time, most of the wealth generated in this country in recent decades has gone only to the very wealthiest among us. For Americans who work for a minimum wage, there has not been a raise for decades, even though inflation has worn away their buying power. Recently we have seen a national movement to raise the minimum wage, but it is not the only issue that the nation must face if it is to address the plight of workers in this economy. 

Recently the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor (DOL) announced that …