From: CNBC
President Donald Trump told business leaders on Monday he believes he can cut regulations by 75 percent or “maybe more.”
At the White House with 10 senior executives, he repeated his campaign pledges to roll back corporate rules, arguing that they have “gotten out of control.” A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to a request to elaborate on which rules Trump will target or how the 75 percent was calculated.
From: RegBlog | Penn Program on Regulation
Editor’s Note: The most important regulatory reform is Regulatory Budget.
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If the United States moves toward a formal regulatory budget, regulators will face the challenge of selecting existing rules to review and rescind. President Obama and several of his predecessors already requested that agencies look back at existing regulations to find ones “to modify, streamline, expand, or repeal.” Although President Obama’s efforts resulted in some substantive reviews, regulators often added new regulations and costs rather than trimming them. Does President-elect Trump leave retrospective review in the hands of cabinet agencies, or task other governmental bodies such as the Congressional Budget Office or the Bureau of Economic Analysis with the job of reviewing more than 170,000 pages of past rules to determine candidates for rescission? Regardless of who is in charge, a functioning regulatory budget depends upon a robust retrospective review effort.
From: Forbes
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That’s bad enough, but often regulators don’t bother to go through the arduous, regimented, required rulemaking process; instead, they make policy by issuing documents variously called “guidance” or “points to consider.” Sometimes policies become evident only from agencies’ decisions to prosecute real or imagined transgressions of its regulations, or from the two extremes of inaction or excessive regulatory zeal.
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Editor’s Note: The tool for enhancing and streamlining effective public participation in the regulatory process is the Interactive Public Docket. For an example of how an IPD changed a federal regulatory decision, please see the Kratom Policy Forum.
From: The Hill
By John Davis II
How much does it cost our government to wade through public comments across its vast network of regulatory agencies?
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Editor’s Note: Within OMB is the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), the cockpit of the regulatory state. See, OIRA Options for the Trump Administration here.
From: Daily Caller | Opinion
Media and political pundits are understandably focused on battles over who President-elect Trump will appoint to serve in high-profile Cabinet positions such as Secretary of State. Yet one of the most critical appointments he will have to make will be his selection to head the less glamorous Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
Editor’s Note: See, OIRA Options for the Trump Administration.
From: Vox
by
OIRA is the location in the White House where they oversee agency rulemaking. This office oversees the methodology that agencies use to count up costs and benefits for new rules. That can be changed with the stroke of a pen. And it sounds weedy, but it’s the kind of thing that can make it harder to issue new regulations.
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From: Science
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The academies’ committee, chaired by University of Texas in Austin President Emeritus Larry Faulkner, had the ear of an influential legislator, Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN), who requested the study. And Alexander made sure its report wasn’t buried. As chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Alexander was also a key negotiator in hammering out agreements between the Senate and the House of Representatives on the Cures bill unveiled last Friday. And he inserted a five-page section of his own bill creating the research board into the broader legislation.
Editor’s Note: For an appreciation of Leon Billings’s accomplishments, see here.
From: The Baltimore Sun
Leon G. Billings, a former member of the Maryland House of Delegates from Montgomery County who was a key author of the federal Clean Air Act and other landmark environmental laws, died Tuesday in Nashville, Tenn., after suffering a stroke while visiting family. He was 78.
Born in Montana, Mr. Billings moved to Washington in 1962 and had a 50-year career in politics and public policy. As the first staff director of the Senate Environment subcommittee, he was a primary author of the 1970 Clean Air Act, one of the most influential environmental laws in U.S. history and a foundation for current air pollution laws.
Editor’s Note: The Publisher’s Note below is cross-posted from OIRA Watch.
The Data Quality Act (DQA), aka the Information Quality Act, allows members of the public to file citizen petitions to obtain corrections of inaccurate information disseminated by federal agencies. Consequently the DQA provides a means for the public to obtain corrections in press releases, reports and regulations issued by federal agencies. In essence the DQA merely requires that federal agencies tell the truth.
From: American Bar Association Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice via Yale Notice & Comment
by Emily Bremer
The ABA Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice has just released its 2016 Report to the President-Elect on Improving the Administrative Process. In keeping with its practice in previous election years, the Section has delivered the report to the transition teams of the two major party candidates for President.
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