Biden Elevates Science Advisor to Cabinet-Level Job
As the U.S. Senate considers President Joe Biden’s Cabinet nominees, one stands out as much for the position he was appointed to as for his impressive qualifications.
Two days before his inauguration, Biden announced that he planned to elevate the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), often referred to as the president’s science advisor, to Cabinet rank. The move underlines Biden’s break with the previous administration’s de-emphasis and politicization of science, which downplayed climate change, sought to slash climate-related research spending, and crafted rules designed to limit the influence of science in agency decisionmaking.
Created by Congress in 1976 to help the president and White House staff steer the country in an increasingly complex world, OSTP leads cross-government efforts to incorporate scientific and technological developments into policy and budgetary decisions. During the Trump administration, OSTP staff dropped by two-thirds, and its director position remained vacant for over two years.
Biden tapped geneticist Eric Lander, who holds a doctorate in mathematics, to lead OSTP into new prominence. Lander is president and founding director of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, which uses genomics to advance human health, and has been a …
This op-ed was originally published by the Philadelphia Inquirer.
In the midst of this long dark winter, it's heartening to see the Biden administration lay out a bold agenda for a more secure, fair, and sustainable future. Holding the Biden administration to its promise to reform the regulatory process to "ensure swift and effective federal action" to "improve the lives of the American people" is a crucial part of that effort. From her perch on a key congressional committee with oversight over agencies and the rulemaking process, the Delaware Valley's own Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon is well-positioned to do just that.
While not on most people's radar, the system of centralized regulatory review poses a potentially significant obstacle to President Joe Biden's ambitious agenda. Originally created by President Ronald Reagan, this process functions as the bureaucratic instantiation of the "job-killing regulations" myth that Reagan so successfully infused …
This post was originally published on Legal Planet. Reprinted with permission.
Conservatives love to complain about faceless bureaucrats, but blaming bureaucrats for regulations is hopelessly out of date. When Elena Kagan was a professor, she wrote an article called “Presidential Administration.” The article applauded her former boss Bill Clinton for seizing greater control of the regulatory process, away from agencies. That trend has accelerated to the point where the White House controls even the fine details of regulation.
Two things can get sidelined in presidential administration. One is agency expertise. No one in the White House has as much knowledge as agency experts about air pollution, or climate change, or endangered species.
The other thing that gets sidelined is active implementation of the law actually passed by Congress. The White House staff who review regulations care only about costs and benefits. The president and the higher-level staff …
