The President’s Budget as a Source of Agency Policy Control

Publisher’s Note: Centralized regulatory review began on the “budget side” of OMB in the form of the Quality of Life Review. From the onset probably the single biggest opposition to OMB assuming its new role were career budget examiners who stated regulatory review was very political and it would eventually set the stage for an intrusive oversight of the budget process.

Well It took forty five years but they were correct as witnessed by the recommendations in the following article.   Consequently the author of the following article is to be complimented  not only for educating the public of the very important and far reaching impacts of the “budget side” of OMB but also for setting  the stage for disclosing an observation that few scholars of centralized regulatory review appreciate.

Science Use in Regulatory Impact Analysis: The Effects of Political Attention and Controversy

From: arXiv.org

Mia Costa, Bruce A. Desmarais, and John A. Hird

A Meaningful and Durable Dialogue Between the Intelligence and Regulatory States has Begun

From: Harvard Law Review

Presidential Intelligence
The administrative state increasingly has things to learn from the intelligence world. For example, the intelligence community has had extensive experience with the legal and policy issues implicated by the revolution in “Big Data.” As the delivery of health care and education, for example, come to depend upon Big Data, regulatory agencies could learn a great deal from spy agencies. Furthermore, in an age of mounting threats in cyberspace, regulators from the “ordinary” administrative state— not to mention private actors —can and must learn from, and interact with, intelligence and national security agencies. But setting these emerging issues aside for future research, the key insight for now is that a meaningful and durable dialogue between the intelligence and regulatory states has begun.

Read Complete Article

Finality and the Virtues of Jurisdictional Declarations

From: RegBlog | Penn Program on Regulation

In United States Army Corps of Engineers v. Hawkes Co., the Supreme Court held that a “jurisdictional determination” issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was final agency action subject to judicial review under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The fact that the Supreme Court’s decision was both unanimous and yet also yielded four separate opinions hints at the interesting and important administrative law issues that lurk in the details.

Testimony on Regulatory Budgeting before the House Budget Committee

Editor’s Note: See, A Website Dedicated to the Implementation of a Regulatory Budget.

From: Competitive Enterprise Institute

Clyde Wayne Crews

***

The concept of budgeting is not new, nor partisan. Democratic Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, who served as Treasury Secretary in the Clinton Administration, proposed in the 1979 Disco era an “an annual cap on the compliance costs each agency could impose on the private sector” plus “coordinat[ing] the regulatory and fiscal budgets.” That’s important when considering dynamic scoring, and recognizing regulations affect macroeconomic variables.

Regulatory budgeting was also considered in President Jimmy Carter’s 1980 Economic Report of the President.

Assessing the Obama Years: OIRA and Regulatory Impacts on Jobs, Wages and Economic Recovery

From: American Action Forum

Douglas Holtz-Eakin

***

Conclusion

OIRA has played a critical role in managing the nation’s regulatory apparatus for more than a generation. Although critiques of the agency are justified, mainly on transparency grounds, its status as a gatekeeper for federal regulation is vital. Unfortunately, its output during this administration will have profound implications for the American economy. These implications may not show up in national unemployment numbers, but in the wages of hundreds of industries, and in the prices paid by millions of Americans.

Maybe the IRS Is Complying with the Congressional Review Act After All

From: Notice & Comment

by Daniel Hemel

My co-blogger Andy Grewal asked in a post on Tuesday: “Why doesn’t the IRS comply with the Congressional Review Act?” My first thought on reading Andy’s post was: “Yeah, why doesn’t it?” My second thought was: “Maybe it does.”

***