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.

What will protect Houston's air from Trump's EPA?

Writing in the Houston Chronicle, Victor Flatt challenges Trump's EPA.

Type: Op-Eds (Aug. 27, 2018)
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Author(s): Victor Flatt
Joint Letter to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler re Regulatory Science Proposal

Joint Letter to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler re Regulatory Science Proposal. CPR joins in comments from 77 organizations calling on Wheeler to withdraw a proposal from his predecessor, Scott Pruitt, that would distort the science used in the agency's rulemaking, August 15, 2018.

Type: Letters to Agencies (Aug. 15, 2018)
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Joint Letter to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler re Cost-Benefit Analysis Proposal

Joint Letter to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler re Cost-Benefit Analysis Proposal from CPR Member Scholars. Nineteen CPR Member Scholars joined in comments calling on Wheeler to withdraw an Advance Notice of Public Rulemaking on cost-benefit analysis. August 13, 2018.

Type: Letters to Agencies (Aug. 13, 2018)
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Author(s): Alejandro Camacho, Kirsten Engel, Victor Flatt, Alexandra Klass, Thomas McGarity, Rebecca Bratspies, Heather Elliott, Daniel Farber, Robert Glicksman, Martha McCluskey, Joel Mintz, Richard Murphy, Amy Sinden, Rena Steinzor, Robert Verchick, Sidney Shapiro, Karen Sokol, Joseph Tomain
A Real, Not Faux, Transparency Proposal for Regulatory Science

"No matter how many times the word, 'transparency,' is repeated to characterize" a Trump administration proposal on the use of science in regulation, "its effects would reverse progress," write Rena Steinzor and Wedny Wagner on The Regulatory Review's pages.

Type: Op-Eds (Aug. 1, 2018)
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Author(s): Wendy Wagner, Rena Steinzor
New EPA administrator, same menace to the environment

Joel Mintz op-ed in Miami Herald: New EPA administrator, same menace to the environment

Type: Op-Eds (July 31, 2018)
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Author(s): Joel Mintz
Joint Letters from CPR re Administrative Law Judges

Joint Letters from CPR Member Scholars and staff to House Rules Committee Ranking Member and to House Education and Workforce Committee Ranking Member re Trump Executive Order on Administrative Law Judges, July 16, 2018.

Type: Legislative Testimony (July 16, 2018)
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Author(s): Victor Flatt, Robert Glicksman, Thomas McGarity, Matt Shudtz, Katie Tracy
Pruitt Praised Scalia, But His Actions Sing a Different Tune

Pruitt Praised Scalia, But His Actions Sing a Different Tune, op-ed by William Buzbee

Type: Op-Eds (July 6, 2018)
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Author(s): William Buzbee
Not content with his war on science, Scott Pruitt is now waging a war on economics

Not content with his war on science, Scott Pruitt is now waging a war on economics, op-ed by Rob Verchick

Type: Op-Eds (June 28, 2018)
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Author(s): Robert Verchick
Webinar: EPA's Benefits-Busting Proposal

CPR's June 27, 2018 webinar on EPA's benefits-busting proposal to slant EPA's cost-benefit analysis methods even further in favor of pollution, featuring CPR's Amy Sinden and James Goodwin.

Type: Webinars (June 27, 2018)
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Author(s): Amy Sinden, James Goodwin
Laurie Ristino's testimony to House Committee on Small Business on regulation and agriculture.

Laurie Ristino's June 21, 2018, testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Small Business on regulation and agriculture, June 21, 2018.

Type: Legislative Testimony (June 21, 2018)
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Author(s): Laurie Ristino

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