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.

How Trump Officials Abuse Cost-Benefit Analysis to Attack Regulations

How Trump Officials Abuse Cost-Benefit Analysis to Attack Regulations, op-ed by Dan Farber

Type: Op-Eds (Jan. 9, 2019)
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Author(s): Daniel Farber
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
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
David Driesen's testimony before the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law re OIRA's role and cost-benefit analysis.

David Driesen's July 6, 2016, testimony before the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law re OIRA's role and cost-benefit analysis.

Type: Legislative Testimony (July 6, 2016)
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Author(s): David Driesen
Comments to the FDA on food safety rules for raw produc

Comments to the FDA on food safety rules for raw produce on several CPR Member Scholars and staff

Type: Letters to Agencies (Nov. 15, 2013)
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Author(s): Lisa Heinzerling, Thomas McGarity, Sidney Shapiro, Rena Steinzor, Michael Patoka
Comments to the FDA on preventive controls for human food production

Comments from several CPR Members Scholars and staff to the FDA on preventive controls for human food production, November 15, 2013

Type: Letters to Agencies (Nov. 15, 2013)
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Author(s): Lisa Heinzerling, Thomas McGarity, Sidney Shapiro, Rena Steinzor, Michael Patoka
Letter to EPA on industry efforts to stall IRIS toxicological assessment through non-germane comments

Letter to EPA on "filter failure," resulting from industry efforts to stall IRIS toxicological assessment through non-germane comments

Type: Letters to Agencies (Nov. 1, 2012)
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Author(s): Rena Steinzor, Matt Shudtz
Comments on 2010 OMB Report to Congress on Costs and Benefits of Regulation

Comments from CPR Member Scholars and staff on 2010 OMB Report to Congress on Costs and Benefits of Regulation

Type: Letters to Agencies (June 23, 2010)
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Author(s): Sidney Shapiro, Amy Sinden, Rena Steinzor, James Goodwin

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