In this quarter’s volume of National Affairs, attorney Jeff Rosen suggests putting regulatory agencies on a leash by subjecting them to a budget. “It is plainly time to impose the same kind of overall discipline on the regulatory system as is already in place on the fiscal system, however imperfect it may be,” he writes.
Once upon a time, Democrats couldn’t have agreed more.
In 1978, Democrat and former vice-presidential nominee Lloyd Bentsen introduced the Federal Regulatory Budget Act, which would’ve created a regulatory budget process jointly overseen by Congress and the executive. Rosen describes it:
The Office of Management and Budget in President Carter’s administration circulated a regulatory budget proposal of its own two years later, though it never manifested as legislation.
While the federal government has never instituted such a sweeping policy, other Democrats have taken cracks at establishing fiscal review of regulations, most notably President Clinton.
There was the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995 — a “thoroughly bipartisan” measure, Rosen observes — which requires agencies to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of new regulations costing more than $100 million annually. It was passed and signed into law, though it is not subject to judicial review, leaving agencies and OMB to police themselves. (Good luck with that.)
Then there was the Congressional Review Act, also passed into law on a bipartisan basis in 1996, which created a framework for Congress to disapprove regulations. Under the statute, the president retains veto authority. It’s barely been applied; only one regulation has ever been struck down with the president’s acquiescence.
There also were regulatory accountability measures creating, alas, even more paper: The Information Quality Act and the Regulatory Right-to-Know Act, both Clinton-era relics, that required the issuance of best practices and reports and such that perhaps 16 people ever read. Courts have held that the former law is unenforceable; the latter’s effectiveness has been hindered by spottily and tardily produced reports.
Let’s give all this an A for effort — and a D for party politics. For a couple of decades there, the blues were active about pursuing a regulatory reform agenda, notable since the Code of Regulations is now more than 175,000 pages in 236 volumes. The issue has become more of a Republican passion in recent years, with legislation including the Regulatory Accountability Act and the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny, or REINS, Act*. Both those bills have made it through the House of Representatives on a mostly partisan basis. Here’s to hoping the issue they concern, regulatory reform, returns to being what it once was: an aisle-crossing matter of good government and taxpayer stewardship.
Read Rosen’s article here.
* The original sponsor of the REINS Act, Rep. Geoff Davis, was once my boss.
