The White House Tuesday threatened to veto a House GOP-backed bill that would force federal agencies to provide more information to the public about pending government regulations.
The Office of Management and Budget said the bill would be “duplicative and costly to the American taxpayer,” imposing an “extremely burdensome” separate tracking and reporting system that “would provide little to no value while diverting agency resources from important priorities.”
“If the president were presented with H.R. 5226, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill,” the OMB said in a statement released Tuesday.
The House is poised to vote on the measure, dubbed the Regulatory Integrity Act, this week.
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Mich., would require agencies to publicly post the date the agency began considering the regulatory action, it’s status and the date it will be finalized, in addition to all public communications related to the proposed regulations.
The OMB also said that “much of the information it would require already is reported twice a year” publicly on www.reginfo.gov and such reporting is mandated by several overlapping federal laws.
“Reporting each and every communication would dramatically increase the cost of regulation to the American taxpayer,” OMB added.
