CPR Member Scholar Robert L. Glicksman will testify at a hearing this morning of the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law.
The hearing will promote the notion of “The Obama Administration’s Regulatory War on Jobs, the Economy, and America’s Global Competitiveness” (sounds awfully familiar), and the solution, the majority will say, is a series of anti-regulatory bills (many of which passed the House, but went nowhere in the Senate, in the last Congress).
Professor Glicksman’s testimony argues that the proposed regulatory process legislation amounts to a solution in search of a problem:
The proponents of making it more difficult for agencies to regulate tend to ignore the very real costs that result from a failure to regulate even though significant costs may flow from decisions not to regulate just as they do from decisions to regulate. … The supporters of the proposed regulatory process bills discussed above are right about one thing: The U.S. regulatory system is not promoting the public interest as well as it should be. But their diagnosis of the problem could not be farther from the mark, and their proposed bills would only make the situation worse. To fix the regulatory system, we should instead focus on finding ways to help agencies effectively achieve their statutory missions, such as protecting people and the environment.
Glicksman’s testimony addresses the REINS Act, Regulatory Accountability Act, and other anti-regulatory messaging efforts.
