Is anybody else getting tired of hearing Obama Administration officials say "sunlight is the best disinfectant?" It was uttered again on Thursday (9/23) when the President's regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein, was speaking at an event hosted by the Small Business Administration. His speech was loaded with all the transparency catch terms: "disclosure," "openness," "sunshine," "open government," "accountability," blah, blah, blah. The rhetoric was annoying to read because I'd been wrestling that week with OIRA's lack of transparency. I've been in the midst of trying to confirm whether representatives of the Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers and other industry lobbyists met recently with the reg czar's staff about a pending OSHA rule. Setting aside that these meetings are outside the normal rulemaking procedures and undermine that process, I'm frustrated hearing a lot of talk …
War on Regulation Coming to the States? Why IPI's Plan For Centralized Regulatory Review Isn't What We Need
One of the most powerful sleights of hand achieved by Republicans during the last election cycle was their renewed declaration of war on regulation. It’s no secret which of their interest groups are most passionate about this aspect of their agenda. Tuesday's LATimes previewed a plan by the Chamber of Commerce, to be announced today, to further unleash its lobbying legions against regulations as soon as the new congress is anointed. But it's unlikely the Chamber will get too specific on which popular regulation it wants to kill, just as Republicans have neglected to specify which budgets will be cut. First build to a fever pitch and then—only at the last minute, mind you—admit the substance.
No surprise there. As the Chamber and John Boehner know all too well, dead regulations, just like specific budget cuts, inevitably generate mourners. West Virginia’s Senator-elect Joe Manchin may have shot a mock-up of federal climate change legislation in a campaign ad, but ask his constituents whether the Mine Safety and Health Administration should get more authority to prosecute the people who caused the Big Branch mine disaster and you’ll get a different answer. Or consider the …
Late last month, the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) posted on its website a document called Agency Checklist: Regulatory Impact Analysis, which, according to the document, is intended to assist federal regulatory agencies with Executive Order 12866-required cost-benefit analyses (CBAs). Such analyses have become a standard, if fatally flawed, stage in the regulatory process. Substantively speaking, OIRA’s document contains nothing new or particularly earth-shattering—instead, it is merely a checklist of some of the requirements for CBAs established by Executive Order 12866 and Circular A-4, a document issued by OIRA in 2003 to provide agencies with comprehensive guidance on how to produce CBAs.
Significantly, though, Executive Order 12866 also establishes several responsibilities for OIRA to guide its participation in the regulatory review process. As CPR’s previous work has made abundantly clear, however, OIRA fails to live up to many of …
There’s a lot of punditry left to be committed about whether and how the GOP majority in the House and the enhanced GOP minority in the Senate will work with the Obama Administration. I’m not optimistic. But even if the President and House Republicans are able to find some small patch of common ground, the hard reality that progressives need to swallow is that whatever major progressive legislation will bear Barack Obama’s signature has already become law, at least for his first term.
The same is not true, however, for what Barack Obama might accomplish simply by infusing the health and safety agencies in his Administration—from EPA to OSHA to FDA—with a sense of urgency, clearing away barriers to regulatory progress within his own White House, and insisting that the agencies enforce existing laws with newfound vigor. A string of catastrophes have …
Tomorrow, Thursday, the American Constitution Society will host a midday panel discussion about the issues and ideas presented in Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental Law and the Search for Objectivity, by CPR Member Scholar Douglas A. Kysar. The panel includes CPR Board Member Amy Sinden.
Drawing insight from a diverse array of sources, including moral philosophy, political theory, cognitive psychology, ecology, and science and technology studies, Kysar offers a new theoretical basis for understanding environmental law and policy. He exposes a critical flaw in the dominant policy paradigm of risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis, which asks policymakers to, in essence, “regulate from nowhere.”
The event is free and open to the public. Details are here. Please join us!
Whatever happens at the polls this November, President Obama will get a chance to turn the electoral tide in 2012, perhaps without the loadstone of recession around his political neck. And, while the economy and many other issues will continue to occupy the President for the best and most obvious of reasons, it’s fair for everyone in the country to expect him to multi-task. For progressives who care about the environment, I’d suggest one critical criterion for judging the Administration: Can the President and his senior appointees stop running from the bogus claims that they stand for big, bloated, ineffective government and instead explain to the American people why government makes a vital difference to our daily lives?
Just last week we got another distressing, preliminary answer to this crucial question when the Administration stiffly dismissed the preliminary findings of staff at the bipartisan National …
Back in the 1970s, when many of the great environmental, health, and safety statutes were adopted, public interest groups shared an overwhelming optimism that greater public participation held the key to maintaining—and even expanding upon—their successes. All they needed was a seat at the table where decisions are made, and their ideas would ultimately prevail. At first, they were right—public interest groups were able to advance their cause through participation in the regulatory process. But before long, regulated industry discovered that they could beat public interest groups at their own game by using their superior resources. The number of “public input” tables grew, and each increasingly became filled with more and more industry groups, while the seats for public interest groups often go empty. If the public interest groups are able to be present, they are often drowned out.
Once a dream, public participation …
Senator Mary Landrieu (D-La.) currently has a hold on Jacob Lew’s confirmation to become the next director of the Office of Management and Budget, and says she won't release it until the Obama Administration ends the moratorium on deepwater oil and gas drilling. She said that while Lew “clearly possesses the expertise necessary to serve…he lacks sufficient concern for the host of economic challenges confronting the Gulf Coast.”
Sen. Landrieu seems to be ignoring the impacts of too hastily allowing oil companies to engage in risky drilling operations – something that came sharply into focus when BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, killing 11 rig workers and spilling an estimated two hundred million gallons of oil into the Gulf. But the impacts of too quickly rushing back into the same inadequate regulatory oversight that contributed to this oil spill don’t seem to factor into …
Cross-posted from The Pump Handle.
This post looks at two recent books by CPR Member Scholars in the context of the BP disaster and other recent regulatory failures:
The People’s Agents and the Battle to Protect the American Public, by Rena Steinzor and Sidney Shapiro
Facing Catastrophe: Environmental Action for a Post-Katrina World, by Robert R. M. Verchick
Does the BP oil spill signify the need for an entirely new conception of the administrative state, one reformulated to meet the global, complex, uncertain, and potentially catastrophic nature of twenty-first century threats to social and ecological well-being? Or does it simply suggest the need to redouble our commitment to environmental, health, and safety laws that are already on the books and that would have prevented the disaster if they had been vigorously enforced?
Two valuable new books shed light on these questions. Both were written before the spill, but both will inevitably …
Today Jacob Lew heads to the hill for two Senate hearings on his nomination to be the new director of the White House's Office of Management and Budget. He is expected to be confirmed.
The hearings will likely focus on budgetary issues, but no less important is another division of OMB: the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), the office charged with coordinating regulatory policy. The policy context is this: from salmonella-laced eggs to the BP oil spill, we are in a year of regulatory disasters. No one agency or individual is responsible for the breakdown; the problems are pervasive and the fixes often not easy.
The OMB could be playing a positive role in supporting regulatory agencies and helping to stop the next crisis before it happens. Instead, it has too often busied itself meddling in agencies' processes, and rushing to stand up for …
