For most federal agencies, centralized review by Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) and regulatory impact analysis have been a routine part of the regulatory process for more than 40 years.[1] Not so in the tax context. When OIRA was in its infancy, OIRA Administrator Christopher DeMuth and Treasury Department General Counsel Peter Wallison […]
*This is the third post in a series on Andrew Rudalevige’s new book, By Executive Order: Bureaucratic Management and the Limits of Presidential Power. For other posts in the series, click here. Perhaps because they bear the president’s signature and don’t require ratification, executive orders are considered to be entirely within the president’s control. But early in […]
Welcome to our second symposium of the month!* We close out October with a series of essays reacting to Prof. Andrew Rudalevige‘s By Executive Order: Bureaucratic Management and the Limits of Presidential Power (Princeton University Press 2021). If we know anything about executive orders, it’s that they’re actions that the president takes alone. But who […]
It’s my pleasure to share that the U.S. Office of Management and Budget has created a Law Fellowship Program, under which law professors and attorneys employed by institutions of higher education; attorneys employed by State, local, or tribal governments; or attorneys employed by other qualifying institutions under 5 C.F.R. § 334.102 can rotate into OMB […]
*This is the fourth post in a series on Michael Livermore and Richard Revesz’s new book, Reviving Rationality: Saving Cost-Benefit Analysis for the Sake of the Environment and Our Health. For other posts in the series, click here. In their most recent book, Reviving Rationality, Mike Livermore and Ricky Revesz build on their record of support for […]
I’m on the editorial advisory board for the Food & Drug Law Journal. Following up on the success of this blog’s symposium on Racism in Administrative Law, and thinking that we might have some readers who cover both admin law and food & drug law, I’m passing along this new opportunity: The Food and Drug Law […]
OMB issued a memo yesterday entitled “Promoting Public Trust in the Federal Government and Effective Policy Implementation through Interagency Review and Coordination of the American Rescue Plan Act.” OMB numbers some of its memos and this one is M-21-24. Apropos of my tendency to gush about OMB and the relative paucity of click-baity listicles on […]
This week, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana issued a preliminary injunction in Eli Lilly & Co. v. Cochran to prevent the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) from implementing an alternative dispute resolution rule that applied to the 340B drug pricing program, on the grounds that the agency […]
President Biden’s nominee to be the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Neera Tanden, wrapped up her second of two confirmation hearings today. Regulation was a topic in both hearings. When might we expect to see a nomination from President Biden for the Administrator of the Office of Information & Regulatory Affairs (OIRA)? […]
If I taught a class called “Advanced Regulatory Maneuvers,” regulatory withdrawals would have to be on the syllabus. Withdrawing a proposed rule that an agency previously issued but has not yet finalized effectively erases the earlier proposal, requiring an agency to start over if it wants to proceed with a rule. A withdrawal communicates to […]
Last April, the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) called for proposals for a new project on “Mass, Computer-Generated, and Fraudulent Comments in Agency Rulemaking.” The request for proposals (RFP) signaled that ACUS was looking for a team of research consultants to take on the work, in concert with the Conference’s Research Director. Assembling […]
The government might always struggle to determine, on its own, whether its regulatory choices reinforce racist structures and systems, such as those at work in the provision of health care. But the public need not passively wait for an agency to pay attention to these issues. The public comment process for rulemaking under the Administrative […]
I wrote last year about GAO’s assessment that OIRA violated the Anti-Deficiency Act when it worked on agencies’ rules during the last shutdown. GAO’s issued a similar letter today, this time finding that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) violated the law when it published rules in the Federal Register during that same shutdown. […]
Following up on our blog’s extensive coverage of the Trump administration’s recent executive orders on agency use of guidance, two recent pieces round up agency compliance with EO 13891. That EO (1) directs agencies to publicly catalog any existing guidance, with anything not in the catalog deemed rescinded, (2) directs agencies to promulgate rules about […]
We’ve covered the issue of Congressional Review Act (CRA) disapprovals quite closely here on the blog, so readers might recall that Congress can use the CRA to disapprove federal agency rules using fast-track procedures during a special window of time following the rule’s issuance. What we’ve surely never talked about on the blog is how […]