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.

Ossifying Ossification: Why the Information Quality Act Should Not Provide for Judicial Review

Ossifying Ossification: Why the Information Quality Act Should Not Provide for Judicial Review, by Sidney A. Shapiro, Rena Steinzor and Margaret Clune, White Paper 601, February 2006.

Type: Reports (Feb. 15, 2006)
Read PDF
Author(s): Sidney Shapiro, Rena Steinzor, Margaret Giblin
Doubting Daubert

Doubting Daubert, by Lisa Heinzerling, White Paper 511, August 2005.

Type: Reports (Sept. 7, 2005)
Read PDF
Author(s): Lisa Heinzerling
Sidney Shapiro's testimony before the Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs of the House Government Reform Committee on the Information Quality Act.

Sidney Shapiro's July 20, 2005, testimony before the Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs of the House Government Reform Committee on the Information Quality Act.

Type: Legislative Testimony (July 20, 2005)
Read PDF
Author(s): Sidney Shapiro
Overcoming Environmental Data Gaps: Why What EPA Doesn't Know about Toxic Chemicals Can Hurt

Overcoming Environmental Data Gaps: Why What EPA Doesn't Know about Toxic Chemicals Can Hurt, by Rena Steinzor, Katherine Baer, and Matt Shudtz, White Paper 510, August 2005.

Type: Reports (July 13, 2005)
Read PDF
Author(s): Rena Steinzor, Matt Shudtz
Is Cost-Benefit Analysis Neutral? An Analysis of the Bush Administration's Approach to Environmental, Health, and Safety Protection

Is Cost-Benefit Analysis Neutral? An Analysis of the Bush Administration's Approach to Environmental, Health, and Safety Protection, by David M. Driesen, White Paper 507, June 2005.

Type: Reports (June 15, 2005)
Read PDF
Author(s): David Driesen
Sidney Shapiro's testimony on OMB's regulatory 'hit list' before the House Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs of the Committee on Government Reform.

Sidney Shapiro's April 12, 2005, testimony on OMB's regulatory 'hit list' before the House Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs of the Committee on Government Reform.

Type: Legislative Testimony (April 12, 2005)
Read PDF
Author(s): Sidney Shapiro
Obscure Law a Powerful Weapon Against Environment

If you've never heard of the Information Quality Act (IQA), you're not alone. When it cleared Congress in 2000, most senators and representatives didn't even know they were voting for it; the two-paragraph provision had been quietly attached only hours before to a massive appropriations bill. But vote for it they did, and it became law without benefit of congressional hearing or debate. Despite its brevity and furtive entrance onto the legislative stage, the act has come to be a powerful weapon in the Bush administration's attack on environmental, health, and safety protections.

Type: Op-Eds (March 23, 2005)
Read Online
Author(s): Sidney Shapiro
On the Environment, Hold Our Ground and Look to the Future

On the Center for American Progress website, Rena Steinzor writes that, when asked about his environmental record during the second presidential debate this fall, President Bush rattled off a series of well focus-grouped phrases – “clean coal,” “clear skies,” and “mak[ing] sure our forests aren’t vulnerable to forest fires” – and touted himself as a “good steward of the land.” The rhetoric ignored reality.

Type: Op-Eds (March 16, 2005)
Read PDF
Author(s): Rena Steinzor
Truth and Science Betrayed: The Case Against the Information Quality Act

Truth and Science Betrayed: The Case Against the Information Quality Act, by Thomas O. McGarity, Sidney A. Shapiro, Rena I. Steinzor, Joanna Goger and Margaret Clune. Publication 502

Type: Reports (March 16, 2005)
Read PDF
Author(s): Thomas McGarity, Sidney Shapiro, Rena Steinzor, Margaret Giblin

Advanced Search Filters

Reset Filters