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?
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.
The Transportation Security Administration acknowledges that its screening procedures have become much more invasive. TSA administrator John Pistole defends them as necessary to provide the best possible security for air travelers. However, he does not provide a reasoned basis for this conclusion -- for example, what incremental security benefits new procedures provide compared with the incremental costs in lost privacy. Pistole's argument reduces to the notion that any increase in inspection intensity is justified if Pistole decides that it is.
Both the new security procedures and Pistole's unwillingness to provide a reasoned basis for them have provoked widespread opprobrium. Is there a constructive path forward, or has TSA lost its way?
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.
After Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab failed to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day, the Transportation Security Administration issued a directive requiring airlines to immediately make major changes in their operations.
Whether TSA's actions were legal (or should have been illegal) is an interesting question. What is more immediately interesting is that the directive itself implies a higher concern about the appearance of safety than safety itself. Nothing in the directive would have prevented Abdulmutallab from bombing Flight 253 or prevent a similarly equipped terrorist from blowing up an airliner tomorrow.
By a vote of 60-37, the Senate yesterday followed the House and shifted $2 billion in "stimulus" funds to replenish the coffers of the Cash for Clunkers program. It is now forecast to last through Labor Day. Of course, previous predictions about market demand have proved to be wrong and the analytic basis for the revised estimate is not clear.
The program is balanced between two competing Democratic factions. The upper Midwest faction, led by Michigan Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin, are mostly concerned about selling cars because they host automobile manufacturing. The bi-coasal faction, led by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Susan Collins (R-ME), want to increase the fuel economy of the automobile fleet because their electorates are "greener" and cars are not manufactured in these States.
A modest 4 mpg increase in fuel economy is required to be eligible for $3,500, but a significant 10 mpg increase is needed to collect $4,500. Feinstein and Collins wanted, but did not succeed in getting, the program changed to impose a 6 mpg standard for eligibility, plus broadening the program to make used vehicles eligible. The program's application only to new vehicles, they said, disadvantaged "lower-income consumers who are disadvantaged under the current program." (The administrative complexity of such a change would have been great, as used vehicles are sold both by car dealers and private parties.)
Opponents of the program generally, such as Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) have complained that it is popular because "people like free money." Like Feinstein and Collins, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) also objected to the program on equity grounds:
"Why destroy a perfectly good car?" the senator pleaded to his colleagues. "We will take a perfectly good automobile that somebody less fortunate could utilize for years . . . and instead we're going to destroy it. We will destroy the opportunity for somebody less fortunate to have that automobile."
The government has disclosed few data about the program, so rigorous empirical analysis isn't yet possible. Casual (but careful) empirical research suggests that car dealers, not consumers who participate in the program, are the principal beneficiaries.
Apparently the new "Cash for Clunkers" program is a big success. It began on July 24, 2009, and according to the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and many other sources, the $1 billion appropriated for it may be running out.
The news has been full of evidence that automobile sales are way down. For some vehicles, demand appear to be undiminished by the financial crisis and recession. What do these vehicles have in common?
It is a fact of physics that vehicles with greater mass do better in collisions. Wall Street Journal automotive columnist Joseph B. White explores this trade-off from an odd perspective -- one in which he seems to wish that it it weren't so.
Wall Street Journal airline columnist Scott McCartney reports that Spirit Airlines has established a "boundary-stretching usage fee" for buying a ticket. His story illustrates a number of practical applications of the principles set forth in Nudge, the recent book by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, who has been announced as President Obama's choice to be the next administrator of OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
Nudge provides an easily accessible, non-technical tour of behavioral economics. It also offers a useful guide to the regulatory policies of the Obama Administration.
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.
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."
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).
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).
