From: GW Columbian College of Arts & Sciences | Regulatory Studies Center
by D. Pérez, S. Dudley, N. Eisner, R. Lutter, D. Zorn and N. Nord
Unnecessary regulatory differences between countries persist as lingering barriers to trade even as traditional barriers are declining.
From: RegBlog | Penn Program on Regulation
While this is a time of great political uncertainty in the United States, the next President has a promising opportunity to advance dramatically what has been called the cost-benefit state. A little more than five years ago, in a case called Entergy Corp. v. Riverkeeper, the Supreme Court embraced as “eminently reasonable” the principles for cost-benefit balancing advanced by every president since at least Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama. Against the backdrop of this established administrative practice, the Court reversed a longstanding presumption against cost-benefit balancing, unless it was clearly permitted in the statute, to reading statutory silences or ambiguities as allowing this type of rational regulation.
Editor’s Note: The Data Quality Act applies to agency guidance documents, memoranda and other information disseminations. The DQA was enacted to prevent agency use of the internet as a backdoor Federal Register. See here.
From: Daily Caller
Kathryn Watson, Reporter
Federal agencies are increasingly using informal guidance documents, memoranda and blog posts to create rules and skirt the formal regulatory process, and Congress must stop them, a new Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) white paper finds.
The federal government has no complete survey on the use of what CEI calls “regulatory dark matter.” The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) only reviewed 14 out of “thousands” of documents created by federal officials in 2014, CEI said.
From: American Action Forum
Sam Batkins
In its series tracking regulation in the final year of the Obama Administration, this month evidenced more of the same: little evidence of a rush in regulation, but steady stream of significant rulemaking. Last month, the White House approved 15 economically significant rulemakings (economic impact of $100 million or more). This month, that figure dropped to 10, but it was still more than any comparable March during a presidential election year since 1996. Through the first three months of this year, regulators have approved 31 significant rulemakings; the two next closest years were 2008 and 2004, when regulators approved just 22 significant rulemakings. In other words, the White House has approved 40 percent more significant regulatory action than any comparable period since 1996.
From: Mercatus Center | George Mason University
Before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Subcommittee on Government Operations
Richard Williams
***
The Growing Imbalance between OIRA and Other Federal Agencies
Editor’s Note: The most crucial regulatory reform is a Regulatory Budget.
From: Mercatus Center | George Mason University
Information, investment and innovation are the engines of economic growth in the 21st century. Yet regulatory accumulation and outdated regulatory processes are preventing both the private and public sectors from effectively using the three “I’s” to solve problems and grow the economy.
***
