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.

Letter to U.S. Senators re the Independent Agency Regulatory Analysis Act of 2015

Robert Verchick, Thomas McGarity, Sidney Shapiro, July 27, 2015, letter to U.S. Senators re the Independent Agency Regulatory Analysis Act of 2015.

Type: Legislative Testimony (July 27, 2015)
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Author(s): Robert Verchick, Thomas McGarity, Sidney Shapiro
Noah M. Sachs' testimony before House Judiciary Committee on OIRA

Noah M. Sachs' July 15, 2015, testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

Type: Legislative Testimony (July 15, 2015)
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Verchick and Goodwin letter to House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law re OIRA

Letter from Robert Verchick and James Goodwin to the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law re the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs

Type: Legislative Testimony (July 15, 2015)
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Author(s): Robert Verchick, James Goodwin
Verchick And Goodwin Letter to Senate Homeland Security Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs and Federal Management re OIRA

Letter from Robert Verchick and James Goodwin to Senate Homeland Security Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs and Federal Management re the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs

Type: Legislative Testimony (July 15, 2015)
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Author(s): Robert Verchick, James Goodwin
Is this the most anti-environmental bill of 2015?

Is this the most anti-environmental bill of 2015?

Type: Op-Eds (July 10, 2015)
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Author(s): Thomas McGarity, Richard Murphy
Earmarking Away the Public Interest CPR Issue Alert
Earmarking Away the Public Interest CPR Issue Alert
Type: News Releases (July 9, 2015)
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Earmarking Away the Public Interest

In Earmarking Away the Public Interest: How Congressional Republicans Use Antiregulatory Appropriations Riders to Benefit Powerful Polluting Industries, CPR's Thomas McGarity, Richard Murphy and James Goodwin explore the ways Republicans in Congress have worked to undercut regulatory safeguards for health, safety and the environment with budget riders.

Type: Reports (July 8, 2015)
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Author(s): Richard Murphy, Thomas McGarity, James Goodwin
Joint Letter on REINS Act

Joint Letter on REINS Act from diverse group of scholars

Type: Legislative Testimony (April 14, 2015)
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Goodwin Testimony to House Small Business Committee

James Goodwin Testimony to House Small Business Committee re silica rule and Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy

Type: Legislative Testimony (March 18, 2015)
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Author(s): James Goodwin
Corporate Violence as Crime: Anniversary of the West Virginia Chemical Spill

In 2014, about 300,000 people in and around Charleston, West Virginia, lost their drinking water source when thousands of gallons of a toxic chemical known as MCHM (4-methylcyclohexanemethanol) leaked into the nearby Elk River through a hole in a rusted-out storage tank. In 2015, the wheels of justice began to catch up with the owners of the responsible company when they were indicted by U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin. Coincidentally, the West Virginia indictments came down on the same day that the Justice Department charged 14 people in Massachusetts for their role in producing and distributing meningitis-tainted steroid injections that killed 64 people. Rena Steinzor in Huffinton Post on prosecuting corporate violence.

Type: Op-Eds (March 14, 2015)
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Author(s): Rena Steinzor

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