Two House Hearings, One Bad Theme
Today, separate House committees will hold hearings that address two federal agencies’ efforts to regulate toxic chemicals. The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy will hold its fifth hearing on issues arising out of ongoing efforts to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Simultaneously, the House Education and Workforce Committee’s Subcommittee on Workforce Protections will hold a hearing addressing, among other things, OSHA’s recent attempts to spur better protections for workers who face chemical hazards. The two hearings have been framed differently and will feature different witnesses, but they share a common thread: each committee’s Republican majority is championing a worldview in which federal agencies should be restricted from engaging in the most basic form of protective action – gathering and sharing information about toxic chemicals’ risks.
The Energy and Commerce hearing, which has a rather conspicuous absence of EPA officials on the witness list, will focus on the provisions of TSCA that relate to chemical testing. It is commonly accepted that EPA – and especially, the public – lack sufficient knowledge about the hazards presented by toxic chemicals in our environment. TSCA does not set out minimum requirements for testing that companies …
Suddenly politics in this country appears to have taken a turn toward democracy and away from markets.
As we develop in a book just published by Oxford University Press, discussing economic inequality. Regulation of Wall Street proceeds apace after the investment banks and mortgage lenders sank the American economy with their recklessness as they now write multi-billion dollar checks for their malfeasance. If indeed the tide has turned, the country is emerging from a cycle deemphasizing government that dates back to the election of Ronald Reagan.
It is too early to know for sure whether the country will once again embrace government as leader and partner in order to address pressing problems that markets have caused or are unable to address. Certainly the poisoning of drinking water in Charleston, West Virginia, the latest highly visible crisis attributable to the failure to engage in effective regulation, should help …
Recently, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce released a report entitled Energy Works for US: Solutions for America’s Energy Future. The data and references in the report are largely accurate, as far as they go, and the report promotes energy efficiency, which is a welcome step. Ultimately, though, the report is unreliable because it has too narrow a vision of the energy future. It inaccurately characterizes government regulation and neglects the environmental consequences surrounding the production, use, consumption, and disposal of our energy resources. Instead, Energy Works is more of a political polemic rather than a useful white paper. While it may well serve the Chamber’s political agenda, Energy Works for US fails to recognize the complexities and challenges necessary to fashion our energy future.
Our energy future is as important a policy matter as any that now confronts the United States. Any discussion of …
As people across the country and around the world watched the tableau of 300,000 West Virginians give up their drinking, cooking and bath water for days on end because an untested toxic chemical was spilled by a company that was co-founded by a twice-convicted felon, the ever-present John Boehner (R-Ohio) had pungent advice for President Barack Obama. “We have enough regulations on the books. And what the administration ought to be doing is actually doing their jobs. Why wasn't this plant inspected since 1991?” he declared. “I am entirely confident that there are ample regulations already on the books to protect the health and safety of the American people. Someone ought to be held accountable here.”
Consistency, of course, is the hobgoblin of small minds and, unfortunately, no member of the media thought to ask Speaker Boehner whether sequestration and other merciless budget cuts might …
It’s time to put to bed an unfortunate myth that’s been floating around the last few weeks. The myth goes something like this: The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA)—the opaque bureau within the White House charged with approving agencies’ draft regulations before they can be released to the public—has succeeded in improving the timeliness of its reviews during the last few months. OIRA has long been a roadblock to the successful implementation of critical safeguards, so if true, this claim would be welcome news. But, when OIRA’s recent record is viewed with a more critical eye, this claim simply does not hold up.
While it’s true that OIRA has recently cleared its docket of several high profile draft rules that have been stuck there for several months or even years, in many cases OIRA has done so by relying …
In his 2013 book, The Bet, Yale historian Paul Sabin uses Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon as foils to explain today’s dysfunctional and polarized politics surrounding energy development and environmental protection. In 1980, Ehrlich and Simon bet each other on the price of five minerals (chromium, copper, nickel, tin, and tungsten.) Ehrlich, a neo-Malthusian, and father of Zero Population Growth, believed that thoughtless and unconstrained consumption of natural resources by an ever-expanding human population would literally doom the planet. Ehrlich posited that by 1990, world population growth would exacerbate the scarcity of natural resources and, therefore, resource prices would rise.
Simon, by contrast, took the position that population growth was an overall benefit to society and that innovation and market pricing would cause resource prices to fall. Simon argued further that the human creativity that population growth entailed would spur economic growth and increase human well-being …
Recently, the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) adopted a statement on how to improve the “timeliness” of rule reviews by the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). As regular readers know, OIRA has time and again delayed the release of crucial health, safety, and environmental regulations, leaving the public exposed to unnecessary dangers while these rules gather dust on OIRA’s desk—like the proposed rule on silica exposure that was delayed for over two and a half years.
Before discussing how ACUS addressed this issue, it’s worth considering what ACUS didn’t address. The project’s original title probably set expectations too high: “Improving the Timeliness, Transparency, and Effectiveness of OIRA Regulatory Review.” The stage appeared to be set for a broad examination of OIRA’s role, including its failure to meet the deadlines and disclosure requirements set forth in …
Recently, the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) adopted a statement on how to improve the “timeliness” of rule reviews by the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). As regular readers know, OIRA has time and again delayed the release of crucial health, safety, and environmental regulations, leaving the public exposed to unnecessary dangers while these rules gather dust on OIRA’s desk—like the proposed rule on silica exposure that was delayed for over two and a half years.
Before discussing how ACUS addressed this issue, it’s worth considering what ACUS didn’t address. The project’s original title probably set expectations too high: “Improving the Timeliness, Transparency, and Effectiveness of OIRA Regulatory Review.” The stage appeared to be set for a broad examination of OIRA’s role, including its failure to meet the deadlines and disclosure requirements set forth in …
In 2001, a group of private citizens, public health groups, and medical organizations petitioned the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to approve nonprescription status for the emergency contraceptive Plan B and its generic cousins. Under the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, the FDA’s decision was supposed to turn on whether these drugs could be taken safely and efficaciously without the assistance of a licensed health professional. Instead, an investigation by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and fact-finding by the district court handling litigation over the controversy made clear that the FDA bowed to political pressure, first by delaying any decision as long it could and then by being as stingy as possible in granting nonprescription access to emergency contraceptives.
Over a twelve-year period, the agency resorted to extreme measures to avoid answering the statutorily dictated question: whether women and girls could safely and efficaciously take emergency …
Former (de)regulatory czar Cass Sunstein is back, full of advice on how to run the government from his perch as a Harvard law professor. In a “View” column for Bloomberg News entitled “Left and Right Are Both Wrong About Regulation,” Sunstein urges his former allies and enemies to redouble their efforts to “look back” at old rules. He claims that forcing agencies to rummage through their closets in search of bad rules has already saved “billions of dollars,” although the only tangible example he offers is the recent Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) decision to allow people to use electronics on airplanes—popular, to be sure, but probably not such a plus for the economy. Sunstein is deaf to any perspective on the regulatory state other than his deeply held prejudice that it is over-regulating and must be choke-chained through the zealous application of cost-benefit analysis. As …
