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Last week, Bloomberg News ran a curious story conflating a range of issues under the banner of regulatory rollbacks. The piece keys off of the ongoing GOP push to deregulate America. That effort has been going on for decades, of course, but in the wake of the recession (made possible, not coincidentally, by deregulation in the […]

In its own words, the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) is “an independent federal agency dedicated to improving the administrative process through consensus-driven applied research, providing nonpartisan expert advice and recommendations for improvement of federal agency procedures.” On Tuesday afternoon, ACUS and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are jointly sponsoring an event at […]

The irony is palpable, though clearly intentional.  More than forty years ago, Congress kicked off the “environmental decade” by adopting the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).  NEPA’s goals are to ensure that federal agencies whose developmental missions often incline them to ignore or place a low priority on environmental protection to consider the possible adverse […]

On March 19, in a major economic policy address, Mitt Romney painted a portrait of a real-life “victim” of the Obama Administration’s supposed overregulation: This administration’s burdensome regulations are even invading the freedom of everyday Americans.  Mike and Chantell Sackett run a small business in Idaho.  They saved enough money to buy a piece of […]

This post was written by CPR President Rena Steinzor and CPR Policy Analyst James Goodwin. Earlier today, OIRA Administrator Cass Sunstein released a new memorandum to agencies directing them to consider and account for the “cumulative” costs of their regulations.  Attacking the cumulative costs of regulation has been a favored tactic among regulated industries and […]

On Tuesday, the House Judiciary committee is marking up the Regulatory Freeze for Jobs Act (H.R. 4078), which would block virtually any “significant regulatory action”—basically, any step toward promulgating any regulation that has a large economic impact or is otherwise controversial— as long as unemployment is over 6 percent.   Rather than support initiatives that actually help […]

A conventional approach to safety is based on the concept of design events. A building code might say, for example, that a building should be able to survive a 7.0 earthquake. This approach has been basic to the regulation of nuclear reactors. As the interim report of the post-Fukushima NRC task force explains: The regulation […]

The toll:  An estimated 6,500 to 17,967 premature deaths, 9,867 non-fatal heart attacks, 3,947 cases of chronic bronchitis, and more than 2.3 million lost work and school days. That’s just a partial tally of the costs Americans will bear because of unjustified delays in two critical health and safety regulations.  More broadly, the Administration’s Fall […]

A new Pew public opinion poll published last week shows substantial public support for specific types of regulation, but skepticism about regulation in general. While 70-89% of the public would either expand or keep current levels of five specific types of regulation, 52% say government regulation of business usually does more harm than good as […]