Regulatory Policy

Regulatory safeguards play a vital role in protecting us from hazards and ensuring that companies that pollute, make unsafe products, and create workplace hazards bear the cost of cleaning up their messes and preventing injuries and deaths. Still, the regulatory system is far from perfect: Rules take too long to develop; enforcement is often feeble; and political pressure from regulated industries has led to weak safeguards.

These systemic problems are made all the more severe by the determination of the Trump administration to undercut sensible safeguards across virtually all aspects of federal regulation. Moreover, the President and his team have taken aim at the the process by which such safeguards are developed, aiming to take a system already slanted in favor of industry profit at the expense of health, safety and the environment, and make it even less protective. For example, where critics of the use of cost-benefit analysis see a system that understates the value of safeguards and overstates the cost of implementing them -- making it difficult to adopt needed protections -- the Trump administration seeks simply to ignore benefits of safeguards, pretending they do not exist. The result is a regulatory system that fails to enforce landmark laws like the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and more.

CPR exposes and opposes efforts by opponents of sensible safeguards to undermine the regulatory system, fighting back against knee-jerk opposition to environmental, health, and safety protections. Below, see what CPR Members Scholars and staff have had to say in reports, testimony, op-eds and more. Use the search box to narrow the list.

Cost-Benefit-Boomerang-AmProspect
Cost-Benefit-Boomerang-AmProspect
Type: Op-Eds (July 26, 2019)
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Author(s): Amy Sinden
Congress should not manage opioid drug labels

CPR's Tom McGarity urges Congress to exercise care in legislating labeling for opioids.

Type: Op-Eds (July 23, 2019)
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Author(s): Thomas McGarity
Cost-Benefit Analysis in the new administration
Cost-Benefit Analysis According to the Trump Administration, by Rena Steinzor
Type: Op-Eds (July 23, 2019)
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Author(s): Rena Steinzor
Justices have an eye on control of federal agencies
Justices have an eye on control of federal agencies, op-ed by Joseph P. Tomain
Type: Op-Eds (July 23, 2019)
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Author(s): Joseph Tomain
The Coming Decline of Anti-Regulatory Conservatism

The Coming Decline of Anti-Regulatory Conservatism

Type: Op-Eds (July 22, 2019)
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Trump Trashes the Environment, Calls It Leadership

Trump Trashes the Environment, Calls It Leadership, op-ed by Joel Mintz

Type: Op-Eds (July 17, 2019)
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Author(s): Joel Mintz
EPA's backward accounting protects polluters, not the people

EPA's backward accounting protects polluters, not the people, op-ed by Amy Sinden and James Goodwin

Type: Op-Eds (July 1, 2019)
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Author(s): Amy Sinden, James Goodwin
Regulation as Social Justice Convening Briefing Memo

In this briefing memo for participants in CPR's June 5, 2019, Regulation as Social Justice conference, James Goodwin sets the table for discussions aimed at devising reforms for the regulatory system so that it can do a better job promoting social justice and addressing unmet community needs.

Type: Reports (June 5, 2019)
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Author(s): James Goodwin
June 2019 Update on Trump EPA’s ‘Benefits-Busting’ Rule

CPR's James Goodwin examines the implications of EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler's May 13, 2019, memo to the agency’s Assistant Administrators. In the memo, Wheeler announced the agency was partially backtracking on its pending rulemaking to overhaul how it would perform cost-benefit analyses for its future rules.

Type: Reports (June 4, 2019)
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Author(s): James Goodwin
What President Trump's Infrastructure Agenda Gets Wrong
What President Trump's Infrastructure Agenda Gets Wrong, op-ed by Alejandro Camacho
Type: Op-Eds (May 6, 2019)
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Author(s): Alejandro Camacho

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