Time To Make Your Voice Heard On White House Proposal To Weaken Regulatory Review Process

As Connecting the Dots noted last month and as The Hill reported at the time, President Joe Biden has signed an executive order that effectively reduces the number of regulations that will need to undergo a more rigorous White House review and has issued new draft guidance that changes how agencies must calculate the cost and benefits of such rules.

Experts have said, in the future, the new process could lead to more regulation of industry. That is because the new process would:

• Lower discount rates that convert future costs and benefits into current dollars;
• Provide greater weight to the distributional effects of a regulatory action; and
• Encourage the assessment of even highly uncertain effects of regulatory action.

If implemented, the proposed revisions represent the most significant change since 2003 to how agencies conduct regulatory cost-benefit analyses. Read the president’s executive order here.

The White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) will be accepting public comment through June 6, 2023. Now is the time to make your voice heard. Click here to learn how to submit comments.

Billy Pizer, vice president for research and policy engagement at Resources for the Future, an energy and environment research organization, saidthe changes represent a “pretty major overhaul” that could lead to more regulation of industry.