Comer & Fallon Seek Information on Biden Admin’s Sweeping Actions Driving Americans’ Regulatory Burdens to Record-Breaking Levels
WASHINGTON—House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) and Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs Chairman Pat Fallon (R-Texas) are pressing for more information on recent actions by the Biden Administration to upend the regulatory review and analysis process that would open the doors to vast economy-crushing regulations. In a letter to the Director of the OMB and Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), Chairman Comer is requesting a staff briefing on the development, purposes, and planned implementation of the Biden Administration’s actions that upend the regulatory review process.
“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,” wrote the lawmakers.
Over the past two years, the Biden Administration has escalated regulatory burdens to levels that far surpass cumulative costs imposed by both the Trump and Obama Administrations. In April 2023, the Biden Administration made changes to OMB’s regulatory review process with Executive Order 14094 and announced updates to Circular A-4, which sets the primary guidance on federal agencies’ regulatory analysis. The Oversight Committee is seeking more information on the implementation of these policies and investigating whether these policies potentially bias agencies towards expanded regulation.
“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,” the lawmakers continued.
Read the full letter to OMB Director Shalanda Young and OIRA Administrator Richard Revesz here.