Obama Administration Releases Regulatory Agenda
Last Thursday, the Obama Administration released its new Spring Unified Regulatory Agenda. According to the report:
- The White House will release its “Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces” executive order this month, which will federal contractors to disclose labor law violations;
- The Department of Labor will release its first draft of new overtime regulations, which could cost the nation’s retailers and restaurants $874 million to implement (those costs would be passed on to consumers) in June;
- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will release final rules governing emissions from new and existing power plants in August;
- The Occupational Safety and Health Administration will release its new injury and illness recordkeeping requirements, or I2P2, which will expand the agency’s authority to track these matters, in September;
- The Department of Labor will release its “persuader” regulation, which, according to Politico “could require management-side law and union consulting firms to disclose more information about how they try to persuade employees not to join unions,” in December; and
- The Mine Safety and Health Administration will release regulations on exposure to silica dust from metals and other mining operations in April 2016.
Also released last week: a new report by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) that found federal regulations cost U.S. consumers and businesses $1.9 trillion a year. Meanwhile, in another sign that the burden of the regulatory state is growing, in a new paper, the Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington University reports budgets for U.S. regulatory agencies will increase 5.3 percent in fiscal year 2016.