Comer & Fallon Seek Information on Biden Admin's Sweeping Actions Driving Americans' Regulatory Burdens to Record-Breaking Levels
Press Release
"The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is conducting oversight of the content, genesis, and planned implementation of Executive Order 14094 on "Modernizing Regulatory Review' and your proposed revision of Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-4 on "Regulatory Analysis.' These actions dramatically threaten to alter federal regulatory development and drive Americans' regulatory burdens beyond already record-breaking levels. We request a staff-level briefing to obtain additional information about these policies.
The Biden Administration now proposes to open the regulatory floodgates even further through E.O. 14094 and major leftward revision of OMB Circular A-4. Executive Order 14094, for example, doubles the economic threshold at which review by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) is required for proposed new regulations. Previously, that threshold stood at $100 million in annual effects on the economy. Now it is $200 million. This will shield many high-cost regulations from OIRA cost-benefit scrutiny. With U.S. economic growth slowing and inflation continuing to eat into Americans' spending power, now is not the time to make it easier for high-cost regulations to evade rigorous economic review.
[ ] Further, the proposed revision to OMB Circular A-4 threatens to open the cost-benefit-analysis process for new rules to massive pro-regulatory distortions. [ ] Notwithstanding E.O. 14094's lip service to E.O. 12866, OMB's proposed revisions to Circular A-4, if finalized, could ensure inflated and distorted calculations of benefits would routinely swamp calculations of projected regulatory costs. This would open the doors to a vast expansion of economy-crushing regulations in the service of progressive causes."
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