This morning, the Center for Progressive Reform published a report on some of the issues that will confront President Obama’s “regulatory czar” Cass Sunstein, if, as seems likely, he is nominated and confirmed to be the director of OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
I’ve blogged on this before, and our report, Reinvigorating Protection of Health, Safety, and the Environment: The Choices Facing Cass Sunstein, speaks for itself, so I won’t go on too long here. The report fleshes out a number of significant differences that we have with the regulatory methods and outcomes Professor Sunstein has embraced – his approach to cost-benefit analysis first and foremost. We believe OIRA’s 25-year record of applying cost-benefit amply demonstrates that it is an inherently flawed method of evaluating proposed regulations. Time and again, benefits (to the public) are understated and costs (to industry) are overstated, with the result that badly needed regulations – developed by environmental, health, and safety experts at regulatory agencies pursuant to a congressional grant of authority – are scuttled or weakened by OIRA economists.
While David Stockman and the Reagan Administration didn’t invent cost-benefit analysis, they turned it into a tool for defeating needed regulation. Somehow they managed to sell the Washington establishment on the idea that cost-benefit brought mathematical precision to the regulatory process. That idea was a scam. The Clinton Administration should have dispatched cost-benefit analysis or at the very least diminished its role in the process, but it missed the chance. The Bush II Administration turned this reactionary methodology into a bulldozer, and developed a series of cost-benefit-related tools that they used to lay waste to needed protections for health, safety and the environment.
The Obama Administration has a unique opportunity to fix the system, by recognizing the failings of cost-benefit. But Cass Sunstein, for all his impressive credentials, seems unlikely to do that. We’ve had this argument with him for some time now, and we expect to keep having it with him once he takes over at OIRA.
We hope we’ll be surprised – that he’ll turn over a new leaf once in office. His record as an academic offers little support for the hope, however. So while there’s good reason to expect that EPA and the other regulatory agencies will once again put environmental, health, and safety interests first in their regulating, there’s ample reason to worry that OIRA may yet be a barrier.
We don’t support or oppose presidential nominations, because we’re not in that business. But if and when Professor Sunstein is confirmed, we plan to pay very careful attention to what happens at OIRA.
The co-authors of The Choices Facing Cass Sunstein are CPR Member Scholars John Applegate (Indiana University–Bloomington), Thomas McGarity (University of Texas), Sidney Shapiro (Wake Forest University), Amy Sinden (Temple University), Rena Steinzor (University of Maryland), Robert R.M. Verchick (Loyola University–New Orleans), and CPR Policy Analyst James Goodwin.
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Rena Steinzor | January 26, 2009
This morning, the Center for Progressive Reform published a report on some of the issues that will confront President Obama’s “regulatory czar” Cass Sunstein, if, as seems likely, he is nominated and confirmed to be the director of OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. I’ve blogged on this before, and our report, Reinvigorating Protection […]
Shana Campbell Jones | January 23, 2009
When it comes to protecting the environment and human health, the difference between what the Obama Administration portends and what the Bush Administration wrought may reside in the difference between three little words: “yes, we can” versus “no we won’t.” How and when Lisa Jackson, President-elect Obama’s pick to head the EPA, tackles perchlorate will […]
Margaret Clune Giblin | January 22, 2009
Former President George W. Bush departed for Dallas on Tuesday, but his pervasive legacy remains here in Washington. In a prior post here on CPRblog, I wrote about one of the Bush Administration’s “midnight regulations,” which collectively stamped the most recent of the Bush imprints on public policy. In its proposed changes to the interagency […]
Matthew Freeman | January 21, 2009
Editor’s Note: Following is the second of several posts focused on federal preemption issues and featuring CPR Member Scholars Thomas McGarity and William Buzbee. In December, both published books on the issue. (The first blog post in the series includes some background on the issue.) McGarity’s book is The Preemption War: When Federal Bureaucracies Trump […]
Holly Doremus | January 20, 2009
Editor’s Note: With the Bush Administration’s remaining time in office now measured in hours, we asked CPR Member Scholars to remind us of some of the less publicized moments of the Administration’s record on environmental issues. Following is the fourth of several entries published before President Bush returns to Texas. In this one, Holly Doremus […]
Joe Feller | January 20, 2009
Editor’s Note: With the Bush Administration’s remaining time in office now measured in hours, we asked CPR Member Scholars to remind us of some of the less publicized moments of the Administration’s record on environmental issues. Following is the third of several entries that we’ll run on CPRBlog before President Bush returns to Texas. Below, […]
Dale Goble | January 19, 2009
Editor’s Note: With the Bush Administration’s remaining time in office now measured in hours, we asked CPR Member Scholars to remind us of some of the less publicized moments of the Administration’s record on environmental issues. Following is the second of several entries that we’ll run on CPRBlog before President Bush returns to Texas. Below, […]
A. Dan Tarlock | January 19, 2009
Editor’s Note: With the Bush Administration’s remaining time in office now measured in hours, we asked CPR Member Scholars to remind us of some of the less publicized moments of the Administration’s record on environmental issues. Following is the first of several entries that we’ll run on CPRBlog before President Bush returns to Texas. A. […]
A. Dan Tarlock | January 18, 2009
Editor’s Note: With the Bush Administration’s remaining time in office now measured in hours, we asked CPR Member Scholars to remind us of some of the less publicized moments of the Administration’s record on environmental issues. Following is the first of several entries that we’ll run on CPRBlog before President Bush returns to Texas. A. […]