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.

Legally Poisoned: How the Law Puts Us at Risk from Toxicants

In his 2011 book, Legally Poisoned: How the Law Puts Us at Risk from Toxicants, published by Harvard Univesity Press, CPR Member Scholar Carl Cranor offers up a scientifically rigorous legal analysis arguing that just as pharmaceuticals and pesticides cannot be sold without pre-market testing, other chemical products should be subject to the same safety measures. Cranor shows, in terrifying detail, what risks we run, while making clear that it is entirely possible to design a less dangerous commercial world.

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Author(s): Carl Cranor
Let Government Govern

Let Government Govern, op-ed by Joseph P. Tomain

Type: Op-Eds (March 4, 2011)
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Author(s): Joseph Tomain
When It REINS, It Pours

When It REINS, It Pours, op-ed by Noah Sachs

Type: Op-Eds (March 4, 2011)
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Setting the Record Straight: The Crain and Crain Report on Regulatory Costs

Setting the Record Straight: The Crain and Crain Report on Regulatory Costs, CPR White Paper 1103, by CPR Member Scholar Sidney Shapiro, National Labor College Professor Ruth Ruttenberg, and CPR Policy Analyst James Goodwin, February 2011.

Type: Reports (Feb. 21, 2011)
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Author(s): Sidney Shapiro, James Goodwin
Editorial Memorandum on The REINS Act: The Conservative Push to Undercut Regulatory Protections for Health, Safety, and the Environment
Editorial Memorandum: The REINS Act: The Conservative Push to Undercut Regulatory Protections for Health, Safety, and the Environment, by Sidney Shapiro
Type: Editorial Memos (Feb. 13, 2011)
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Letter to SBA on the 'Crain and Crain' Study.

Letter from Sidney Shapiro to Small Business Administration calling on the Office of Advocacy to withdraw its sponsorship of a report based on seriously flawed research methods

Type: Letters to Agencies (Feb. 8, 2011)
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Author(s): Sidney Shapiro

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