When it commenced on June 1, OIRA’s review of the EPA’s draft final rule to limit greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants launched a flurry of lobbying activity among a veritable who’s who of America’s largest fossil fuel polluters. In just over six weeks, the White House’s antiregulatory shop has presided over no less than 21 Executive Order 12866 meetings, the majority of which involved high-priced corporate lobbyists seeking to dilute, delay, or block the rule outright.
The log for a July 1 meeting requested by Berkshire Hathaway Energy contains an interesting tidbit: Among the attendees was a representative of the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Office of Advocacy. Nominally, of course, the mission of the SBA Office of Advocacy is to ensure that the concerns of America’s small businesses are adequately represented in the federal rulemaking process. So, it’s a little perplexing that a member of the SBA Office of Advocacy staff would be seated alongside the President and CEO of one of the largest and wealthiest energy concerns in the United States and two of its vice presidents. Berkshire Hathaway Energy is of course a component of Berkshire Hathaway, the Chairman and CEO of which is Warren Buffet who himself is currently listed as the third wealthiest person on earth.
CPR has long raised concerns that the SBA Office of Advocacy works on behalf of large corporate interests to weaken regulations, rather than fulfilling its congressional mandate of addressing the unique concerns of real small businesses. In a damning report released last July, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) seemed to confirm these concerns. Among other things, the GAO report could find no evidence that the SBA Office of Advocacy’s decision to intervene in individual rulemakings was ever prompted by actual small business complaints. Instead, CPR and others have found copious evidence of the SBA Office of Advocacy often works with large corporate interests, such as the American Chemistry Council (ACC), to block regulations that they find inconvenient to their bottom line.
To be sure, the SBA Office of Advocacy may have had a legitimate reason to attend the Berkshire Hathaway Energy meeting—one that is directly relevant to its statutory mission of serving real small businesses. Indeed, representatives of the office have attended a few meetings related to the EPA’s power plant rule that were requested by a variety of different groups. Given the SBA Office of Advocacy’s history of working with large corporate interests, however, its involvement in the meeting did not look great. More to the point, given its poor track record of actually fulfilling its statutory mission, the SBA Office of Advocacy should probably not be wasting its scarce resources on attending meetings that have such marginal relevance to the concerns of real small businesses.
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James Goodwin | July 22, 2015
When it commenced on June 1, OIRA’s review of the EPA’s draft final rule to limit greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants launched a flurry of lobbying activity among a veritable who’s who of America’s largest fossil fuel polluters. In just over six weeks, the White House’s antiregulatory shop has presided over no less […]
Rena Steinzor | July 16, 2015
Labor Secretary Tom Perez came into office pledging to create good jobs and take on the economic injustice that oppresses blue-collar workers, from raising the minimum wage and restoring unpaid overtime to combatting wage theft. Luckily, the head of his Wage and Hour Division, David Weil, the author of a revelatory report on how to […]
Erin Kesler | July 16, 2015
Today, CPR Member Scholars, with a larger group of law professors, submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in the case of Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) v. Electric Power Supply Association. The professors submitted the brief because, “they believe that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit made serious errors when it held that […]
James Goodwin | July 15, 2015
“I’m Republican, and I want to do regulatory reform.” Whether they’ve uttered that exact nine-word phrase or not, virtually every Republican on Capitol Hill has enthusiastically endorsed the sentiment it expresses at some point—if not on a near-daily basis—during the last few years. Who could blame them? The unshakable conviction that our regulatory system is […]
Matt Shudtz | July 14, 2015
Public Citizen to host discussion of CPR Member Scholar Rena Steinzor’s new book, “Why Not Jail? Industrial Catastrophes, Corporate Malfeasance, and Government Inaction.” On Monday, July 20, 2015 Public Citizen, the Center for Progressive Reform and the Bauman Foundation will lead a discussion focused on CPR’s immediate past president and University of Maryland Law School […]
Amy Sinden | July 13, 2015
In Michigan v. EPA, handed down two weeks ago, the Supreme Court waded into the decades-long debate over the use of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) in agency rulemaking. The decision struck down EPA’s limits on mercury emissions from power plants for the agency’s failure to consider costs, and so appears, superficially at least, like a win […]
Erin Kesler | July 9, 2015
House GOP’s “Negative Earmarks” in Appropriations Bill Would Undercut Key Protections and Cost Thousands of Lives Today, the Center for Progressive Reform released a new Issue Alert, “Earmarking Away the Public Interest: How Congressional Republicans Use Antiregulatory Appropriations Riders to Benefit Powerful Polluting Industries.” The report, by CPR Member Scholars Thomas O. McGarity of the […]
Katie Tracy | July 7, 2015
The Supreme Court’s decision on June 26 recognizing same-sex couples’ fundamental right to marry is a significant, albeit long overdue, civil rights victory for the LGBT community and for our nation. You don’t have to look any further than the long list of benefits available only to married couples to see how denying same-sex couples […]
Dave Owen | July 7, 2015
In a blog post yesterday, Todd Aagaard provided a quick summary of yesterday’s Third Circuit decision rejecting the Farm Bureau Federation’s challenge to the Chesapeake Bay TMDL. This is an interesting and important case, and it will take a while to digest. But just based on a preliminary read, a few issues seem particularly interesting […]