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This afternoon, the Fisheries, Water, and Wildlife Subcommittee of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will convene a hearing on a topic that is fast becoming the congressional conservative equivalent of talking about the weather: the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Clean Water Rule.  With the provocative title of "Erosion of Exemptions and Expansion of […]

The growing problem of economic inequality in the United States continues to draw significant attention – and for good reason. By 2011, America’s top 1 percent owned more than 40 percent of the nation’s wealth, and ours ranks as one of the most unequal economies among developed countries. Meanwhile, the median wage rate for workers […]

These days, it seems a week doesn’t go by without some conservative advocacy group releasing a new study that purports to measure the total annual costs of federal regulation. In this case, it’s literally true. Last week, the reliably anti-regulatory Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) put out its annual tally, provocatively titled “Ten Thousand Commandments,” which […]

Once upon a time, congressional conservatives pretended to care about the appearance, if not the reality, of corruption afflicting the federal budgeting process. Strangely, they chose to act on their sanctimonious outrage by banning earmarks – or legislative instructions that direct federal agencies to spend appropriated funds on certain specified projects – while leaving the […]

Center for Progressive Reform Member Scholar Joel Mintz submitted written testimony to the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial, and Antitrust Law ahead of its hearing this morning on yet another ill-advised bill, the misleadingly named “Stop Settlement Funds Slush Funds Act of 2016.” The bill would place arbitrary limits on how the […]

Several weeks ago, Sen. Elizabeth Warren delivered perhaps the most important speech on the U.S. regulatory system in recent memory at a forum on regulatory capture organized by the Administrative Conference of the United States. In it, she described how the regulatory system was not working for the people as it should be – or […]

Over the last few years, deregulatory advocates have pursued a well-trodden path for advancing their anti-safeguard agenda: Publish a large, glossy “study,” replete with impressive mathiness, that purports to measure the impacts of regulation but in fact provides a highly skewed portrayal by consciously ignoring the many benefits that regulations provide. (For example, see here, […]

Over the weekend, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released the final draft of its annual report on the costs and benefits of federal regulation, which purports to provide a reasonably complete picture of the total impact that federal regulations have on the U.S. economy. This year’s final report finds that federal […]

CPR Vice President Sid Shapiro is among the many distinguished panelists participating this monring in a forum called “Regulatory Capture in the 21st Century.” The forum is hosted by the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), an independent federal agency that works to provide Congress with advice on improving the administrative system. The event will feature remarks […]