Sen. Rob Portman said a bill he has co-sponsored would rein in federal regulatory overreach by requiring more oversight and analysis.
“We have too many regulations right now that just don’t make sense,” Portman, R-Ohio, told the Washington Examiner. “The aren’t subject to a cost-benefit analysis, they aren’t using good science, they aren’t subject to the kind of review you’d want to have.”
Portman’s bill has bipartisan backing. He co-authored the Senate Regulatory Accountability Act with Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat representing North Dakota.
“All across North Dakota, the biggest concern I hear from business owners and workers is about regulations hurting their abilities to do their jobs,” Heitkamp said in a statement. “Our bipartisan bill would make federal regulations smarter and more effective for everyone impacted by them, support job growth, create certainty, and provide an important check and balance on the president no matter who is in charge.”
Portman pointed to the Clean Power Plan and the Stream Buffer Rule as Obama-era regulations that would have benefited from a reformed regulatory process.
Republicans and some Democratic critics said the two regulations were examples of executive overreach and hurtful to jobs and the economy.
The Clean Power Plan, which instituted caps on power plant emissions, was blocked in court. The Stream Buffer Rule, which would have increased testing and monitoring by coal companies mining near waterways, was overturned by the GOP-led Congress.
“That wouldn’t happen if you had a better process in place,” Portman said of the two Obama-era rules.
The Portman-Heitkamp legislation would require cost-benefit analysis of new regulations and require the federal government to seek the most cost-effective way to put new regulations in place.
It would also require a review of major regulations every ten years to ensure the regulations are not outdated and would allow for hearings that would give those impacted by the new regulations a chance to challenge them.
Portman said the kind of changes he seeks to the regulatory process fall under Administrative Procedures Act, which was enacted in 1946. “It hasn’t been reformed in any substantial way in 70 years,” Portman said. “This brings things up to date and lets the public have more input.”
