OIRA@2050

From: GW Regulatory Studies Center

Regulation is one of the most important mechanisms by which the federal government sets policy. This course offers a comprehensive examination of regulatory theory, policy, and practice, focusing on analytical requirements for estimating the impacts of proposed regulatory alternatives and evaluating the effects of existing regulations. It provides a legal foundation for understanding regulations’ role in public policy, and examines the relationship between Congress, regulatory agencies, executive branch oversight offices, the public, and the courts.

Participants will learn how to:

Editor’s Note:  The phrase “regulatory tsunami” properly refers to the signing of Executive Order 12291 on regulatory review by President Reagan, see remarks by Jim Tozzi on OIRA’s formative years here.  A key aftershock was President Clinton signing Executive Order 12866, Regulatory Planning and Review.  President Obama’s Executive Order 13563, Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review, built on long-established, bipartisan Presidential policy.

From: OMB Watch

Has the Obama administration unleashed a regulatory “tsunami” as House and Senate Republicans charge?  Has this administration issued more significant final rules than past administrations?   Contrary to the rhetoric of the business community and its allies on Capitol Hill, hard research shows the answer is an unambiguous no.

From: FederalNewsRadio.com 1500AM

By Jason Miller

The White House is using a restaurant-style rating system for the 2012 SAVE Award  contest, and it wants agency chief financial officers to be the food critics.

The administration is asking federal employees to rank money-saving ideas with  one, two or three stars — with three being the top-rated, most likely to  save the government money.

From: Columbia Journalism Review

TSA and border security account for almost all the increase in regulatory staff since 1980

By Ryan Chittum

Bloomberg News story last week on how the folks who oversee the regulators are overmatched these days raises a question: What’s a regulator?

Here’s the lede (emphasis mine)

As the U.S. government’s regulatory bureaucracy has ballooned, one agency has been left behind: the office that oversees the regulators.

The regulatory bureaucracy has ballooned? That doesn’t sound right. The federal workforce, after all, is down over the last forty-plus years, and places like OSHA are shadows of their former selves.

Editor’s Note:  The study “Growth in Regulators’ Budget Slowed by Fiscal Stalemate: An Analysis of the U.S. Budget for Fiscal Years 2012 and 2013” is attached below.  The study is published jointly by the Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington University and the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy at Washington University (St. Louis). 

The report’s Executive Summary is reprinted below.

From: RegBlog

Alisa Melekhina

Since 1993, government agencies have been required by executive order to analyze the broader effects of regulation on “productivity, employment, and competitiveness.” Yet despite this obligation, most of the economic analyses that agencies conduct on their regulations have focused just on the direct benefits and costs of regulatory compliance. Although these immediate impacts are obviously of great importance, the recent economic downturn has made the broader impacts of regulation increasingly salient.

In order to advance research on regulation’s broader economic impacts, the Penn Program on Regulation (PPR) recently hosted a workshop in Washington, D.C., on “Beyond Compliance Costs: The Other Economic Impacts of Regulation.”

Editor’s Note:  As discussed below with regard to current Administation policy and the quotes from former OIRA Administrator Dudley, cost-benefit analysis plays an essential role in protecting public saftey.

From: Bloomberg

More than a decade has passed since the last major-airline accident on U.S. soil. That’s great news for aviation companies and their passengers — and a complication for rule makers trying to improve flight safety.

The benefits of aviation rules are calculated primarily on how many deaths they may prevent, so the safest decade in modern airline history is making it harder to justify the cost of new requirements.

From: Free Enterprise

by Sean Hackbarth

From Driving the Day (You are reading it daily, aren’t you?) there’s a story about how the federal government’s overseer of regulators, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), has been shrinking staff while regulators’ staff have been growing:

The number of people working in federal agencies with regulatory authority has doubled to about 292,000 under both Republican and Democratic administrations during the past 30 years. In the same period, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the White House bureau that reviews most major rules, has shrunk to 45 employees from 90, according to data compiled by researchers at George Washington University and Washington University in St. Louis.

this is a test of lareg file uploaidng

2012-01-10_DEI_and_TG_Letter_to_OIRA_Administrator_regarding_PPACA_regs.pdf (4 MB)

Editor’s Note:  The DATA Act’s exemptions from the Administrative Procedure Act and Paperwork Reduction Act raise grave concerns and questions about the proposed legislation which require thorough review and vetting.  It is not clear how a statute which would deprive the public of the protection of the “good government” laws could possibly be in the public interest.  For OMB’s views on the proposal, please see OIRA Watch here.

From: Cato Institute

 OMB’s Laggard Transparency Record

Posted by Jim Harper