A Note
Washington abounds with concerns that as a result of the Presidential Executive Order on the modernization of centralized regulatory review that the Biden Administration will take steps to reduce the rigor associated with conducting benefit-cost analyses of regulations as presently practiced pursuant to existing guidelines. In the absence of the immediate availability of a substitute measure and prior to the end of a forthcoming public comment period, as stated elsewhere, then under these conditions the Biden Administration is far too sophisticated to take on the entire community of professional economists. We come to this position because the Administration would not want to incite the not so subtle regulatory think tanks and watchdogs as well as the myriad of regulated entities, some of whom have been supportive of many of the Administration initiatives. Of course there is also the need to keep Congress informed, as was the case when the Carter Administration was in the process of arming the Office of Regulatory and Information Policy, the precursor to OIRA, some forty years ago. Therefore it is likely that the Administration will continue to support the existing benefit-cost analyses of regulations, at least for the immediate future.