Notice & Comment

Notice & Comment

Notice & Comment

If Prices Are a Problem, ERISA is Not the Solution

Yesterday, the internet caught fire with a new study drawing attention on the prices that we pay for health-care services. Contrary to expectations in some quarters, low Medicare spending doesn’t correlate at all with low spending in the private market. Instead, variations in private spending are driven mainly by variations in prices—and prices, in turn, […]

Notice & Comment

GAO Finds EPA Actions in WOTUS Rulemaking to Violate Anti-Propaganda and Anti-Lobbying Prohibitions, by Jeffrey S. Lubbers

There was an interesting development yesterday in the controversy over EPA’s aggressive social media campaign in support of its “Waters of the United States” rule. This rulemaking, conducted in conjunction with the Army Corps of Engineers, on was the subject of a panel at the recent ABA Adlaw Section Fall meeting. The Final Rule was […]

Notice & Comment

​The Congressional Review Act Revisited

This month the House of Representatives passed two resolutions under the Congressional Review Act (5 USC 801, et seq .) that disapproved of EPA’s recent rules for greenhouse gases from new and existing power plants. S.J. Resolutions 23 and 24. These two resolutions had already passed the Senate on November 17, 2015. The vote in […]

Notice & Comment

The IRS’s Fee Waiver Regulations May Be Doomed

In my prior post, I considered proposed regulations issued by the Treasury and the IRS regarding management fee waiver transactions. See Treasury Department & IRS, Disguised Payments for Services, 80 Fed. Reg. 43652 (July 23, 2015). To cater to the majority readership of the Yale Journal on Regulation, that post viewed the issue through the lens […]

Notice & Comment

​Ongoing Interest in Regulatory Cost Budgets

This week the Senate Budget Committee held another hearing titled “Moving to a Stronger Economy Through Regulatory Budgeting”. The hearing included three witnesses, including Dr. John Graham, former OIRA Administrator and present Dean of Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs; Dr. Jerry Ellig, Senior Research Fellow at George Mason University; and Prof. Robert […]

Notice & Comment

​Regulatory “Look Back” in Practice: Deployment of the Single Window, by Jeff Weiss

As the Obama Administration moves into the final stretch of establishing a “Single Window” – an electronic portal through which traders can transmit data required by U.S. agencies for importing and exporting goods — it is worth discussing the pivotal role being played in the Single Window roll-out by retrospective review. The Administration’s retrospective review […]

Notice & Comment

Impact of 2016 Continuing Appropriations Likely Ending a Day Sooner than Intended, by Sam Wice

I previously explained how U.S. Government funding will likely expire at 11:59 p.m. on Thursday, December 10, and not 11:59 p.m. on Friday, December 11, as Congress, the White House, and most commentators believe. With Congress and the President disagreeing on spending provisions such as defunding Planned Parenthood, the Affordable Care Act, and allowing Syrian refugees, […]

Notice & Comment

Regulation of the Sharing Economy: Uber and Beyond, by Jack Beermann

At the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Law Schools, the Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice of the American Bar Association will be sponsoring a terrific program on regulation of the sharing economy. The program will take place from 6:30 – 9:30 pm on Friday, January 8, including the Reception, in the […]

Notice & Comment

The IRS’s Attack on Private Equity Firms May Be Doomed

In a prior post, I described some issues related to regulatory severability, that is, a court’s decision to strike or not strike an entire regulation project when it finds that only a portion of it violates the law. In this post, I want to explain how principles of regulatory severability could doom some regulations recently proposed […]

Notice & Comment

More on Regulatory Severability

In a prior post, I described some issues related to regulatory severability, that is, a court’s decision to strike or not strike an entire regulation project when it finds that only a portion of it violates the law. In this post, I want to explain how principles of regulatory severability could doom some regulations recently proposed […]