Last night, the House of Representatives, in an almost completely party-line vote, passed the Regulatory Integrity Act (H.R. 5226), a bill that would prohibit the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and other agencies from engaging the public on their pending efforts to address climate change, prevent foodborne illness, and otherwise act in the public interest. Center for Progressive Reform Senior Policy Analyst James Goodwin offered the following reaction to the bill's passage:
Poll after poll shows that the more the American people hear about individual regulatory safeguards, the more they support them. So it's no surprise that House conservatives, acting at the behest of their corporate benefactors, want to muzzle the agency experts who help develop these crucial protections.
Make no mistake, this bill is about preventing agencies from making the public aware of proposed health, safety, and environmental protections and soliciting the feedback needed for informing and strengthening those policies. As such, this bill flies in the face of the Administrative Procedure Act and the agencies' authorizing statutes, all of which mandate public engagement in rule development. Under the bill's vague and broad language, agencies could not even discuss the results of the cost-benefit analyses they must perform for these rules, since a finding of benefits in excess of costs might constitute improper "promotion" of the regulation. Given that the bill's sponsors are such avowed fans of cost-benefit analysis, this would be a strange result indeed.
In the end, when agencies cannot communicate with the public about their own rules, corporate lobbyists and anti-regulatory members of Congress will only be too happy to fill in the resulting silence. You can bet the message they share about pending rules will be inaccurate and calculated to deceive. Such a bad government bill shouldn't be taking up Congress's precious time, particularly when there are so many pressing challenges facing the country. It's a good thing for the public interest that President Obama has promised to veto this bill in the unlikely event it reaches his desk.
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James Goodwin | September 15, 2016
Last night, the House of Representatives, in an almost completely party-line vote, passed the Regulatory Integrity Act (H.R. 5226), a bill that would prohibit the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and other agencies from engaging the public on their pending efforts to address climate change, prevent foodborne illness, and […]
Brian Gumm | September 13, 2016
Every year, Thomson Reuters and West Publishing compile a set of significant and influential articles from a number of legal scholars who focus on land use and environmental law. The Land Use & Environment Law Review represents some of the best scholarship on these issues, and peer reviewers recently included five pieces on environmental law […]
David Driesen | September 8, 2016
The Clean Power Plan has been widely touted as significant because it regulates the largest source of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the United States – the electric power industry. Its significance, however, goes beyond U.S. CO2 emissions because it serves as the linchpin of international efforts to reduce greenhouse gases in order to avoid […]
David Driesen | September 8, 2016
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Clean Power Plan (CPP) relies, in part, on a pollution reduction strategy – generation shifting – that is at issue in the ongoing lawsuit over the rule. Generation shifting involves increasing use of relatively clean natural gas and renewable energy and reducing use of relatively dirty and expensive coal-fired […]
James Goodwin | September 2, 2016
September 2, 2011, was a lot like today, the Friday before a long holiday weekend. While many were already turning their attention to backyard barbecues and afternoon naps in hammocks, the then-Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) Cass Sunstein, the controversial official charged with supervising federal regulatory activities, dropped […]
James Goodwin | August 31, 2016
Next Wednesday, Public Citizen is holding an important event that aims to promote greater transparency in the presidential transition process. The transition process is among the most critical events in our constitutional system of democracy. As the Center for Presidential Transition lays out in detail in its Presidential Transition Guide, this process is where the […]
Brian Gumm | August 29, 2016
It’s common knowledge that our energy choices impact the planet’s climate, but less widely known is how climate change and its intensified storms, heat waves, droughts, and water shortages affect our energy grid. Already vulnerable, the grid can suffer catastrophic damage when a storm like Hurricane Katrina or Hurricane Sandy strikes. In an Aug. 26 […]
Matthew Freeman | August 25, 2016
Over the course of the last few decades, one of the great communications challenges facing progressives has been, and continues to be, how we talk about climate change. The difficulty in persuading politicians and the public about the need for action isn’t just that the effort has run head-long into a massive and well-funded industry […]
James Goodwin | August 23, 2016
Yesterday, several CPR Member Scholars and staff formally submitted comments on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) proposed rule to limit the use of forced arbitration agreements in consumer contracts for financial products like credit cards and bank accounts. CPR Member Scholars and staff have been tracking this rulemaking for over a year and in […]