The House Energy & Commerce sub-committee on Environment and the Economy held a hearing yesterday on “regulatory chaos” (yikes!). One figure seemed popular: $1.75 trillion. That’s how much regulations cost the U.S. economy each year, sub-committee vice-chair Tim Murphy said in his opening statement. Two of the four witnesses made the same claim in their testimony (William Kovacs of the Chamber of Commerce and Karen Harned of the National Federation of Independent Business). The committee’s briefing memo on the hearing featured, you guessed it, the same number.
The number, of course, comes from a September 2010 study sponsored by the Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy. In February, a CPR white paper showed that the SBA study was severely flawed. Most notably, more than 70 percent of the total cost estimated had been based on public opinion polling about the perceived regulatory climate in different countries, numbers that the original researchers had never meant to be used for a guess about the total effect on the U.S. economy. In April, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service published a report on the SBA study, including similar and additional critiques.
Even more impressive is that neither the study nor those who cite it make any effort to account for the benefits of regulation – saved lives, cleaner air and water, safer workplaces, safer automobiles, and so on. If they were to do that, they’d have to report that the benefits – even by the means of the badly-slanted-against-regulation methods of cost-benefit analysis imposed by the Office of Management and Budget – greatly outweigh the costs. But the Small Business Administration’s study simply ignores the benefits, the better to focus attention on its jaw-dropping, if wildly inaccurate, estimate of the costs.
Why is it regulatory opponents can’t seem to cite many studies on regulations other than this one?
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Ben Somberg | July 15, 2011
The House Energy & Commerce sub-committee on Environment and the Economy held a hearing yesterday on “regulatory chaos” (yikes!). One figure seemed popular: $1.75 trillion. That’s how much regulations cost the U.S. economy each year, sub-committee vice-chair Tim Murphy said in his opening statement. Two of the four witnesses made the same claim in their […]
Daniel Rosenberg | July 14, 2011
Editor’s Note: This morning, CPR President Rena Steinzor will testify at a House hearing regarding EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System chemical database (full testimony). This post by NRDC Senior Attorney Daniel Rosenberg, cross-posted from Switchboard, explains the importance of IRIS and how the program is under attack. Thursday morning, the House Science Committee’s Investigation and […]
Rena Steinzor | July 14, 2011
The nation’s capital is all but intolerable these days, even for those of us who have lived here for decades and are used to excessive histrionics and gross summer weather. A pall of bad, hot, wet air has settled over the place, and serves as a backdrop to the slow-motion car wreck that is the debt […]
Lena Pons | July 13, 2011
Last week, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) of the Office of Management and Budget released the semiannual regulatory agenda. I pointed out that the agenda, which contains the regulatory agencies’ planned actions, was quite late. Although the plans share problems from past years, like simply pushing back the target dates for regulatory actions, there […]
Thomas McGarity | July 13, 2011
On Monday, the White House announced that President Obama had signed a new executive order on federal regulation to supplement January’s executive order to executive branch regulatory agencies. The new executive order is aimed at the “independent agencies,” so named because the heads of those agencies do not serve at the pleasure of the president. By statute, […]
Lesley McAllister | July 12, 2011
Cross-posted from Environmental Law Prof Blog. Do you realize that the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule finalized by the Environmental Protection Agency last week represents the end of the famed Acid Rain Program? It’s a good thing because the Acid Rain Program had outlived its usefulness by several years and its allowance market had collapsed. Legislated […]
Ben Somberg | July 8, 2011
Last month, the American Chemistry Council sent a letter to Jacob Lew, Director of the Office of Managmenet and Budget, calling on OMB to “take greater responsibility in the coordination and review of chemical safety assessments” and to “require EPA to submit all ongoing EPA IRIS assessments to the NAS for independent review.” The letter […]
Lena Pons | July 7, 2011
The Administration has been busy promoting President Obama’s new approach to regulatory review, which required federal regulatory agencies to produce plans for how they would review existing regulations and look for regulations to cut. But while the mad dash to find regulations the administration can trot out as misguided or outdated continued, the agencies were delayed […]
Sandra Zellmer | July 6, 2011
This post was written by CPR Member Scholar Sandra Zellmer and John H. Davidson, an emeritus professor of law at the University of South Dakota. It appeared first in the Omaha World-Herald. As the Missouri River nears the 500-year flood mark, we sympathize with those whose homes and businesses are flooded. And we recognize that […]