Despite sometimes taking years to develop and write, 1,829 federal regulations on programs including Obamacare and Dodd-Frank had to be corrected since 2001, with the Obama administration reaching its high last year with a 4.1 correction rate, according to a new analysis.
The American Action Network, a center-right policy institute led by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, reviewed every regulatory correction and found that one of 30 regulations has been corrected.
“Perhaps 1,800 corrections should be viewed as a positive development. Regulators were able to identify and correct errors in substantive regulation within the calendar year. Yet, when one out of every 30 rules contains some sort of error, private entities, Congress, and taxpayers should take note,” said the report provided to Secrets.
“With 141 corrections last year, there are no signs the error rate is declining,” added author Sam Batkins is director of regulatory policy at the American Action Forum.
Under Obama, the average correction rate has been 3.3 percent. Under the former Bush administration, it was 3.6 percent.
Some of the corrections found by the Forum were simple typos. But others had potential costly impacts, said the report.
“For example, the administration issued 16 corrections to the health exchange final rule. One section noted, ‘However, one sentence implies that any licensure standards for Navigators would cause Navigators to be agents and brokers, which is inaccurate.’ Obviously, the exchanges had other problems during implementation, beyond these corrections,” said the report.
And it noted with surprise that even a small percentage of corrections are needed considering the long process of fact-checking involved.
“Given the talk of how ‘ossified’ and lengthy the rulemaking process is today, one would imagine that a four-to-five year process might help to eliminate these mistakes. Regulators offer their rulemakings up to public comment for roughly two to three months, submit the measures for review to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), and then present for public inspection before official publication,” said the report.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
