Later this morning, CPR Member Scholar and Georgetown Law Professor Lisa Heinzerling will testify before the House Small Business Committee at a hearing that appears to be aimed at reveling in the Trump administration's assault on regulatory safeguards. In her testimony, Professor Heinzerling will explain why the celebratory mirth and merriment from the committee's majority members and their invited witnesses is misplaced and most likely premature.
As Heinzerling will point out, the major motivating force behind the Trump administration's assault is its so-called one-in, two-out executive order, which mandates that agencies repeal two existing rules for every new rule they wish to issue and to ensure that the cost savings that result from those repeals are sufficient to fully offset any costs the new rule might impose. This order was meant to give agencies' deregulatory efforts a shove, but it may prove to have been too powerful in that regard. In their mad dash to advance the order's objectives – a dash made even madder by the administration's own unforced error in failing to fill key leadership posts – agencies have cut important procedural corners, leaving their deregulatory actions vulnerable to legal challenges. And, as Heinzerling points out, agencies have been on the losing end of a lot of legal challenges so far.
The good news, such as it is, is that much of the Trump deregulatory agenda has not held up or remains in legal limbo, and much of what remains pending is likely to face a similar fate.
Apart from pointing out the shaky legal underpinnings of the Trump assault, Heinzerling will also take issue with the policy basis of the one-in, two-out order. In particular, she'll point out that forcing agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to shut off their rulemaking pipeline, as the order does, seems especially foolish in light of the recent Office and Management and Budget (OMB) draft Report to Congress on the Costs and Benefits of Federal Regulation. She lays out the self-defeating effect that Trump's order has had on the EPA in the following stark terms:
No agency in this administration has taken a bigger axe to existing regulatory programs than the EPA. Yet OMB has also reported that EPA rules outperform the rules of all other agencies combined in terms of producing net monetized benefits. OMB estimates that from 2006 to 2016, EPA regulations provided as much as $706 billion in benefits – measured in such terms as lives saved, illnesses averted, and environmental degradation reduced – while imposing no more than $65 billion in costs.
In terms that should resonate with the committee members, Heinzerling will also explain why the Trump assault on public safeguards probably will not help small business and almost certainly will harm them. As she puts it, "In fact, many of the administration's deregulatory actions not only fail to target their savings to small businesses, but they affirmatively harm small entities by withdrawing regulatory protections that would have benefited them."
If the committee truly cares about helping small businesses, they would do well to pay close heed to Heinzerling's testimony. Undermining vital protections won't help anyone, least of all small businesses.
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James Goodwin | March 7, 2018
Later this morning, CPR Member Scholar and Georgetown Law Professor Lisa Heinzerling will testify before the House Small Business Committee at a hearing that appears to be aimed at reveling in the Trump administration’s assault on regulatory safeguards. In her testimony, Professor Heinzerling will explain why the celebratory mirth and merriment from the committee’s majority […]
Evan Isaacson | March 1, 2018
Recently, the Environmental Integrity Project released a report highlighting the freeze that Administrator Scott Pruitt has placed on the enforcement of the nation's environmental laws. The headline figures are stunning: "Civil Cases for Pollution Violations Decline by 44 Percent and Penalties Down by 49 Percent." And these numbers may understate the situation, as former EPA […]
James Goodwin | February 28, 2018
Last week, the Trump administration released the annual Draft Report to Congress on the Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulations. As befitting this auspicious occasion, the administration pulled out all the stops: targeted op-eds from high-ranking administration officials; relevant operatives dispatched to the leading Sunday morning talk shows; and even a televised press conference with […]
David Flores | February 28, 2018
At a workshop on Friday, March 2, representatives of the Chesapeake Bay jurisdictions will meet in Baltimore to make important final decisions about how to address pollution – previously accounted for – from the Conowingo Dam and climate change. Decisions these representatives make about how to address pollution loads through the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum […]
Rena Steinzor | February 22, 2018
This op-ed originally ran in The Hill. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has wasted little time portraying himself as the prosecutor-in-chief of street — as opposed to white collar — crime, rejecting this month even a broadly bipartisan effort to reduce sentences for nonviolent crime supported by a coalition that spans the Koch brothers and the NAACP. […]
Evan Isaacson | February 15, 2018
This year more than most, it bears repeating that a budget is a moral document, or at least that it has moral implications. It's particularly important to remember not just because President Trump's budget is so appallingly skewed in favor of military spending – this looks to be one pricey parade – but also because […]
Dave Owen | February 15, 2018
Originally published on Environmental Law Prof Blog. Last week, the Ninth Circuit decided Hawai’i Wildlife Fund v. County of Maui, a case involving Maui County’s practice of pumping wastewater into wells, from which the wastewater flowed through a subsurface aquifer and into the Pacific Ocean. The county, according to the court, needed a National Pollutant […]
Matt Shudtz | February 14, 2018
It was an early holiday present to the nation’s biggest polluters. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced in early December that he was drastically changing the way EPA reviews polluters’ compliance – or lack thereof – with the Clean Air Act. Today on Capitol Hill, CPR Member Scholar Emily Hammond will explain that this dramatic shift […]
Laurie Ristino | February 8, 2018
This blog post is part of a series on the 2018 Farm Bill. Since the 1930s, Congress has tried to formulate an effective farm “safety net,” oscillating among different schemes in order to protect farmers from the severe economic impacts of the Depression and the Dust Bowl. What started as a New Deal emergency intervention has become […]