1 Mar 2011
The REINS Act:
Would it work as intended?
by Richard Belzer
in Regulatory Policy
House and Senate Republicans have proposed legislation (HR 10, S 299) intending to substantially change federal regulatory practice. The proposed Regulations From the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act of 2011 (The "REINS Act").
What is the bill supposed to do? What is it likely to do?
More...21 Jan 2011
Regulatory Review in the Obama Administration:
Clinton and Obama directives compared
by Richard Belzer
in Regulatory Policy
On January 18, President Obama issued an executive order that modifies longstanding principles and procedures for centralized regulatory oversight conducted by by the Office of Management and Budget.
The three tables below provide a side-by-side comparison of the new text with the text of Executive Order 12,866, issued by President Clinton in 1993. To guide readers in making comparisons, text that is underlined is the same in both documents.
Interpreting such texts requires close attention to detail. For this reason, we have color-coded both texts as follows:
GREEN HIGHLIGHT: Directive language (e.g., "shall", "must") with tightly defined verbs (e.g., "identify", "assess", "design", "maximize", "promulgate") often applied to concrete objects (e.g., "net benefits", "duplicative", "burdensome", "least burdensome", "most cost-effective") sometimes comprehensively (e.g., "only").
Objective performance evaluation generally is possible.
YELLOW HIGHLIGHT: Hortatory language (e.g., "should", "may") with loosely defined verbs (e.g., "consider", "promote", "endeavor to provide", "harmonize"), or used to modify directive language ambiguously (e.g., "where feasible and appropriate", "to the extent feasible").
Objective performance evaluation typically is impossible.
Where GREEN text is preceded or followed by YELLOW text, the result is always weaker.
More...
14 Jan 2010
Paperwork Reduction Act
How to improve implementation of the law
by Richard Belzer
in Paperwork Burdens
On October 28, 2009, the Office of Management and Budget solicited comments on its implementation of the Paperwork Reduction Act. The purpose of the PRA is to minimize burdens on the public resulting from the federal government's information requests.
Neutral Source managing editor Richard Belzer submitted comments on his own behalf. These comments eventually will be uploaded by OMB to Regulations.Gov, the Federal government's web portal for all regulatory matters. (Clicking on the link above will reveal a fundamental weakness of the web portal: Unless the agency chooses to include information identifying the name and organizational affiliation of the submitter, there is no way to find any specific comment without opening them all.)
In response to numerous requests, a copy of these comment is posted to the Library.
More...16 Nov 2009
What's in a Name?
The Washington Redskins case
by Richard Belzer
in Amusements
The Washington Redskins football club has prevailed in a lawsuit alleging that the team name is racially disparaging and thus must be changed.
More...9 Nov 2009
The Economics of Reliable Sources
by Richard Belzer
in Information Quality
Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander shows that he does not understand the economics of anonymous sources. More...
25 Feb 2009
Regulatory Review in the Obama Administration, Part 3:
Cass Sunstein and his critics
by Richard Belzer
in People & Institutions, Regulatory Policy
Long time University of Chicago Law (and recent Harvard Law) professor Cass Sunstein is expected to be nominated by President Obama to be the new Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. OIRA is the statutory office within the White House Office of Management and Budget that, among other things, has conducted centralized regulatory oversight on behalf of the president since 1981.
When Susan Dudley was nominated in 2006 to head this office, Neutral Source published an eight-part analysis of her "paper trail," which is summarized here. We undertook this task because her nomination generated controversy from certain activist groups, most notably Public Citizen, and we found significant factual discrepancies between the actual content of this paper trail and her critics claims about it.
We intend to repeat this effort, but Sunstein presents an unusually difficult challenge.
More...24 Feb 2009
Regulatory Review in the Obama Administration, Part 2:
Alive and well, reports to the contrary notwithstanding
by Richard Belzer
in Regulatory Policy
In a February 17 article, Politico reporter Josh Gerstein claims that "[i]n his first weeks in office, President Barack Obama shut down his predecessor’s system for reviewing regulations" and "managed to take all these actions with nary a mention from the White House press corps." Gerstein further claims that this "escaped notice because they were never announced by the White House Press Office and were never placed on the White House web site."
Gerstein's reporting is erroneous.
More...
3 Feb 2009
Regulatory Review in the Obama Administration, Part 1:
Executive Order 13497
by Richard Belzer
in Regulatory Policy
On January 30, President Obama signed Executive Order 13497, which begins the process of changing the way the Office of Management and Budgwet performs centralized review of draft proposed and draft final regulations. In a memorandum to agency heads, the President also announced a plan to produce "a set of recommendations" within 100 days (~ May 14, 2009).
Texts for both documents are provided below.
More...12 Nov 2008
Petition for Correction to the Office of Management and Budget Concerning the Draft 2008 Report to Congress on the Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulation
by Richard Belzer
in Information Quality
On November 7, 2008, Regulatory Checkbook -- Neutral Sourcve's sister nonprofit organization -- filed a public comment on the Office of Management and Budget's draft 2008 Report to Congress on the Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulation.
This public comment also was submitted as a formal Petition for Correction under OMB's Information Quality Guidelines (PDF). Under those guidelines, influential information OMB disseminates must be substantively and presentionally objective, transparent and reproducible, and provide utility for its intended purposes of informing Congress and the public.
The draft Report does not satisfy these information quality standards.
OMB is obligated by its own guidelines to respond within 60 days (i.e., by January 6, 2009).
More...
25 Sep 2008
Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulation:
2008 draft report published for public comment
by Richard Belzer
in Regulatory Economics
The Office of Management and Budget has published its 2008 draft report to Congress on the benefits and costs of federal reguilation. OMB is required by lawe to publish this report every year.
Public comments are due by Friday, November 7, 2008.
More...21 Feb 2008
How Not to Estimate Benefits:
The case of Avastin
by Richard Belzer
in Regulatory Economics, Regulatory Policy
The Wall Street Journal editorializes today against a longstanding Food and Drug Administration policy that values the benefits of drugs for terminal cancer patients solely in terms of life extension. Some visual aids may help make the issues easier to understand. More...
18 Feb 2008
Taxing Illegal Markets to Raise Revenue:
To plug a budget deficit, NYS Governor Spitzer proposes to tax illegal drugs
by Richard Belzer
in Regulatory Economics
New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer has proposed to plug part of an expected $4.4 billion budget deficit by enacting a tax on illegal drugs. Similar laws have been enacted elsewhere to enable law enforcement to charge drugs distributors and dealers with another form of tax evasion. (Chances are they already evade federal and state income taxes.)
Are there any conditions in which this proposal could raise significant revenue? More...
2 Jan 2008
What Are Judges Worth? Part 2008
Chief Justice Roberts still fails economics but may yet win his case
by Richard Belzer
in Regulatory Economics
A
year ago we posted notes here
and here
on Chief Justice John Roberts' state of the judiciary report for 2007,
in which he bemoaned federal judges' low salaries and warned of a
"constitutional crisis" if salaries were not increased. We were not
competent to offer informed insight on CJ Roberts' legal claim, but we
were able to quickly dispense with his economic arguments. Taking his
own data at face value, we were able to show that his argument lacked
any merit.
The Chief Justice is back with his report
for 2008, and he recycles the same complaints about low judicial
salaries. What's different this year is that the Congressional
Research Service has analyzed the data more carefully than CJ Roberts
did, and found that Roberts' conclusions were not empirically
supported. In this year's report, Roberts' ignores the CRS study,
dropped the economic privation argument he made last year, and adopted
the all-purpose defense used by weak claimants: he divided the cost of
his proposal by the largest imaginable denominator. More...
6 Nov 2007
The Economics of Cell-Phone Jammers:
A case study in government misallocation of property rights
by Richard Belzer
in Regulatory Economics, Regulatory Policy
New York Times reporter Matt Richtel seems to have set off a pandemic news stories and commentaries with his profile of "otherwise respectable people" who use jamming devices to illegally obstruct the cell phone conversations of people nearby. Based on groundswell of support that appears to have formed for jammers, this looks like a problem worthy of a small amount of economic analysis.
As it happens, there are simple market-based solutions. The real problem is that the federal government has preempted them by disallowing market forces to work. One thing should be clear: jammers have appeared on the market because there is considerable consumer demand for them. That means there used to be a "market failure," and this market failure will persists as long the federal government insists on sustaining it.
19 Sep 2007
OMB's Principles for Risk Analysis:
OMB's initial response to the National Academy of Sciences
by Richard Belzer
in Regulatory Policy, Regulatory Science
Today the Office of Management and Budget issued a memorandum to agency heads directing them to adhere to certain principles of risk analysis. The memorandum is OMB's initial response to the report of a National Research Council panel that OMB asked to review a 2006 proposed bulletin on risk assessment. That report called the proposed text "fundamentally flawed" and gave seven recommendations, one of which was that it be withdrawn.
A fair reading of the new memorandum is that OMB followed this specific recommendation. More...
