In a letter issued yesterday, the general counsel of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) opined that the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) violated the Antideficiency Act (ADA) when it worked on Department of Labor rules during last winter’s government shutdown. Shutdowns happen when an agency does not have an appropriation from Congress. […]
Our blog exploded a couple of weeks ago when the president issued two new Executive Orders related to guidance. In about 24 hours we had four fine contributions, a testament to the blog’s deep bench: Breaking News: Two Major Executive Orders, Aaron Nielson The October 9 Executive Orders and Government Acquisition of Information, Bernard Bell […]
In their detailed history, Engineering Rules, Professors JoAnne Yates and Craig N. Murphy describe some of the people and processes that have featured prominently in standard-setting movements from the 1880s forward. The authors’ admiration for them is clear, as they describe the personal commitment of organizers and committee participants who travel, sometimes on their own […]
This week, we’re hosting a web symposium on Dr. Rachel A. Potter’s new book, Bending the Rules: Procedural Politicking in the Bureaucracy (University of Chicago Press). Dr. Potter is an Assistant Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia. Prior to her academic career, she worked for the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in […]
This week I moderated a webinar at the Food & Drug Law Institute (FDLI) on the regulation of cannabis-derived products. This is a product & policy area that’s evolving as I type. Just this week, former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb wrote an op-ed acknowledging the consumer “craze” for products with CBD in them and encouraging FDA […]
Following up on my post about a Congressional hearing on regulatory reform before the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs and Federal Management (RAFM), two new bills were introduced on May 13. Both bills grew out of that hearing (video & written testimony available on the HSGAC website). The Early […]
The REINS Act would have required Congress to approve all new “major” rules before they could go into effect. A significant re-ordering of the regulatory process, it was one of many regulatory reform bills that was introduced but not enacted in the 115th Congress. The REINS Act reflected aspects of a larger movement to strengthen the […]
Two former OIRA Administrators are testifying tomorrow morning in a hearing that might re-kindle regulatory reform efforts in Congress. As Chris Walker has covered on this blog, the 115th Congress had a flurry of regulatory reform activity, none of which was enacted. This is the first Senate hearing in the 116th to take up regulatory reform.* […]
In mid-May, the GW Regulatory Studies Center will host UVA Professor Rachel A. Potter to discuss her new book “Bending the Rules: Procedural Politicking in the Bureaucracy.” From the University of Chicago Press summary: “With Bending the Rules, Rachel Augustine Potter shows that rulemaking is not the rote administrative activity it is commonly imagined to be but […]
The Office of Management and Budget issued a memo on Thursday describing its new approach to its implementation of the Congressional Review Act (CRA). Under the CRA, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) is required to determine whether agency “rules” are “major.” In this memo, OMB calls for information about economic impacts to inform its […]
I’m following Professor Aaron Nielson’s (BYU) lead and sharing an abbreviated summary of my remarks from the recent & excellent day-long Yale Journal on Regulation conference on “Regulatory Change & the Trump Administrative State.” I was delighted to be part of the panel on “Changes in Administrative Law in the Executive Branch,” along with Professors […]
There was a big development in the litigation challenging Trump’s regulatory “two-for-one” executive order last night. As I blogged about earlier, Judge Moss previously dismissed the case for lack of standing on February 26, 2018. Plaintiffs requested the ability to amend their complaint in light of the opinion, which the government did not oppose. That second […]
The longest shutdown in the history of the federal government ended yesterday. It lasted 35 days. It was a partial shutdown, but its effects unfold for months, if not longer. While I was trolling around on various .gov websites (dear reader, do I need better hobbies? I think we both know the answer is “no”), […]
I have a piece up in The Hill with some initial thoughts about 5 ways the partial federal shutdown is playing out in the rulemaking process. The punchline is that the longer key aspects of the federal regulatory process remain idle, the harder it will be for the president to make progress on his deregulatory goals. […]
Over at SCOTUSblog, health law and admin law dynamos Abbe R. Gluck and Anne Joseph O’Connell joined forces to write a helpful argument preview for a case that will be argued at the Supreme Court next week. Azar v. Allina Health Services is both a Medicare case and an interpretive rule case; a complexity two-fer, if […]