About Amit Narang

Amit Narang is the Regulatory Policy Advocate for Congress Watch.

Posts by Amit Narang:

House GOP pushes radical bill based on anti-regulatory myths, Senate panel sets the record straight on the costs of regulatory delay

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While the summer recess in Congress is only one week away, the silly nonsense that House Republicans have planned for this week will make you wish that they were already gone.

Under the guise of what House Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) has dubbed the “Stop Government Abuse” week, the House will be voting on a very dangerous bill called the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act, or “REINS” Act (H.R. 367). If REINS sounds familiar to readers, it’s because House Republicans have pulled this stunt before, passing REINS in 2011 on a party line vote.

Fortunately, the Senate wasn’t interested then, and isn’t interested now, in playing games with an extreme bill like REINS, but that hasn’t stopped Republicans in the House from adding REINS to the long string of symbolic votes (37 on repealing Obamacare alone) that has made the House the ultimate “broken record chorus.”

So what exactly is this so-called “government abuse” that REINS is intended to prevent?

If REINS became law, it would establish a process by which House Republicans would be able to single-handedly block our federal agencies from putting new public health and safety standards in place. The full impact of this cannot be understated.  We’re talking about public protections that span the spectrum, including new greenhouse gas standards to combat climate change, new financial reforms that hold Wall Street accountable, new food safety measures designed to address the recent tainted food outbreaks, new workplace safety standards and updates to badly outdated ones, new safety standards for consumer products such as children’s toys, and the list goes on and on. More

Time for a change at the White House (de)regulatory office

Pop Quiz: what’s the most powerful government office you’ve never heard of?

Maybe a secretive national security office or covert operations outfit? Think again. Actually the most powerful government office you’ve never heard of, according to the former head of the office, is called the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, referred to as OIRA for those in the know. To be fair, many readers of this blog are probably in the know — which is a good thing, since tomorrow is the Senate confirmation hearing for the new nominee to head OIRA, Howard Shelanski.

But for those who aren’t familiar with OIRA, a little background is in order. OIRA is a small office within the Office of Management and Budget, meaning, for all intents and purposes, that it’s an extension of the White House. Its job, in a nutshell, is to review regulations from agencies and give the green light before agencies can go ahead with putting those regulations in place. Sounds pretty banal and technical, right? Not quite.

On the surface, OIRA seems like any other White House office that Republicans love to bash (particularly since this one deals with so-called “job-killing” regulations). But scratch below the surface, and you find that Republicans have actually been proposing numerous pieces of legislation in the last few years that would give much more power to this small White House office. In fact, when it comes to Republicans giving the White House more authority, it’s hard to find a better example than OIRA. If you’re like me, you’re probably starting to hear the “Twilight Zone” music somewhere in the background … More

Public Citizen president brings common sense to House regulation hearing

photo by geetarchurchy via flickr

The anti-regulatory charade in Congress officially has begun.

Last week, a House Judiciary subcommittee held a hearing provocatively entitled “The Obama Administration’s Regulatory War on Jobs, the Economy, and America’s Global Competitiveness.”

If it’s not exceedingly clear, House Republicans have picked up where they left off last year, scapegoating our government’s duty to protect the public’s health and safety as the source of our country’s economic troubles, while obscuring the fact that it was a lack of government oversight, based on a faith in Wall Street’s ability to “regulate itself,” that brought on the Great Recession.

Fortunately, Public Citizen’s president Robert Weissman testified  (watch video here) at the hearing to inject some much-needed balance into the discussion. More

Cost-benefit analysis, a tool for partisan obstructionism

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Flickr photo by chrisinplymouth

A main feature of the misleading campaign to scapegoat regulations as the “job-killing” culprit of our nation’s economic troubles has been a dogmatic insistence on more and more “cost-benefit analysis” at federal agencies.

Lobbyists (and the companies that back them) and lawmakers who oppose regulations for ideological (or financial) reasons have long used cost-benefit analysis to obstruct vigorous public health and safety protections. Proponents of such analyses claim they seek merely to require agencies to assess the economic costs and benefits of their actions. In practice, however, cost-benefit analyses amount to the scientific equivalent of trying to predict the future – and then interpreting the predictions through a purely economic lens.

In other words, the practice has more to do with delaying the implementation of regulations and distracting agencies with resource-intensive busywork than ensuring that the will of Congress is carried out.

Consider Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.), who outspokenly supported the need for cost-benefit analysis when it came to regulations he opposed – namely, those created by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill. Meanwhile, Garrett conveniently ignored the need for cost-benefit analysis of regulations he supported – those originating from the ill-conceived JOBS Act, which lets all but the largest newly public companies dodge regulations that protect investors. More

Energy Industry Lobbyists Pull the Plug on Public Protections

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Despite repeated claims by Republicans that their signature anti-regulatory measure, the REINS Act (“Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny”) is geared toward helping small business, Public Citizen has learned that the energy industry has by far exerted the most lobbying influence in support of the proposed legislation.

Today’s  report is being released just days after Republicans announced their intention to make passage of the REINS Act a central feature of their legislative agenda this fall. Soon, Republicans will be unleashing a new wave of rhetoric about how overregulation is killing small businesses and preventing job creation, without any mention of the essential benefits that regulation provides in the form of clean air and water, safe food and consumer products, a sound financial system and strong workplace safety protections.

In spite of the Republicans’ insistence that small businesses stand to benefit the most from REINS, lobbying disclosures analyzed in the report reveal that the dominant force behind the push for REINS is in fact a particular industry composed almost exclusively of large corporations: the energy industry. More

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