The Obama administration imposed over 1,000 new rules, one-third of all proposed in 2015, without first following the law and giving Congress a look and chance to kill them, according to a new report.
The American Action Forum, which studies federal rules, regulations and other actions, said that the number of violations in 2015 was even bigger than in 2014, when a top Obama aide apologized for breaking the law and promised to make sure new rules were first passed by Congress and the General Accountability Office.
The center-right group said that despite the pledge, it found “955 rules weren’t sent to GAO in 2014 and roughly 1,069 weren’t reported in 2015.” The report said that there were 3,408 rules issued by the administration’s agencies last year.
The Congressional Review Act requires that agencies pass new rules by Congress before they are imposed, explaining the impact of each and whether they will have a major or minor economic impact.
In essence, said the report, the administration is hiding the regulations from Congress and the public, and Congress. “Technically, a rule that fails to follow this procedure cannot take effect. In practice, however, there is little preventing agencies from hiding regulations from Congress and GAO,” it said.
The report from Sam Batkins, director of regulatory policy at the American Action Forum, said that the administration has a poor record of transparency on the issue.
He also found that when evaluating new regs, the GAO and administration didn’t always agree in the impact, raising concerns that the administration is soft-peddling the impact of costly rules.
See his full report here.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
