Obama's Regulatory Reforms Protect the Status Quo

On Jan. 18, President Obama issued a long-awaited executive order on the regulatory process and two related presidential memoranda. The order and the memos are aimed at reaffirming the existing regulatory process rather than significantly reforming it. The most impactful of the three documents is likely to be the memo on regulatory compliance, which stems from the administration's commitment to greater government accountability.

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DOD Getting a Better Handle on Contractor Numbers

The Department of Defense (DOD) and the branches of the armed forces utilize hundreds of thousands of contractors to perform a multitude of support functions each year. This includes everything from management and information technology (IT) support to intelligence work and weapons maintenance. Until 2008, neither the Pentagon nor the military branches knew exactly how many contractors they employed, nor were they required to find out. A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report sheds some light on the Pentagon's congressionally mandated efforts to tally its contractors, along with whether DOD is using the information to make better personnel decisions.

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Balanced Budget Amendment Would Impede Economic Recoveries

Over the past 30 fiscal years, the federal government has run a surplus only three times. In the past three years, the government has seen deficits totaling almost $3.5 trillion, and the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) baseline prediction shows deficits for at least the next decade. With such a history and with the recent rise of the Tea Party and its fiscally conservative contingent in Congress, it is unsurprising that balanced budget amendments to the Constitution are once again finding their way to the national agenda. While forcing Congress to balance the books through a constitutional mandate may be appealing to many fiscal hawks, a balanced budget amendment could impede economic recoveries following Wall Street meltdowns and other calamities.

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Corporate Secrecy at Issue in Supreme Court Case

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Jan. 19 in a case that could have far-reaching ramifications for public access to corporate-related information. AT&T, fighting to prevent disclosure of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) files investigating the company, has argued that releasing the documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) would damage the company's privacy. This argument comes despite the fact that the expectation of privacy has long been recognized only as an individual right, not a corporate one.

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Obama Continues Post-Spill Reforms to Better Police Drilling

The Obama administration continued revamping offshore oil drilling regulation by recently announcing the next step in its plans to reorganize the Department of the Interior – creating a new agency to oversee drilling safety.

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Protecting the Public or Big Business? Battle Lines are Drawn

As the 112th Congress convenes, a renewed battle over the role of government in protecting the public is being waged. The battle reflects the decades-old myth that regulations are "job-killers" and that government must either sacrifice jobs to provide public safety or sacrifice lives, health, and environmental quality to protect jobs.

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New House Rules Will Increase Deficit, Underfund National Priorities

Whenever a party takes control of one or both houses of Congress, it exercises its prerogative to implement a flurry of new rules and practices. This is generally unremarkable, though in 2011, with the House of Representatives returning to Republican control, the changes are stirring up controversy. Despite claiming to fight for fiscal responsibility and transparency, by tweaking a handful of rules, the Republican majority will end up delivering the opposite.

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In WikiLeaks' Wake, Administration Tightens Information Security

A new memo from the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) details a new requirement for all federal agencies to assess aspects of their information security in the wake of a series of embarrassing disclosures by WikiLeaks. The memo directs agencies to consider 11 pages of questions relating to information security procedures, including whether employees are required to report contacts with journalists. Transparency advocates have criticized some aspects of OMB's strategy as potentially damaging to open government.

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Rules to Watch for in 2011

Federal agencies have released their rulemaking agendas for 2011, providing the public with a roadmap of the health, safety, and environmental safeguards it can anticipate in the new year.

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Corporate Failures Not Enough to Trigger Meaningful Regulatory Change in 2010

In 2010, Big Business was often in the news for the wrong reasons. The BP oil spill disaster, the explosion at a Massey Energy mine that killed 29, and the recall of millions of Toyota vehicles, to name a few, made headlines throughout the year, both for their human, economic, and environmental toll and for the negligence they exposed. Despite these failures, 2010 was an excellent year for America's corporate elite. Profits skyrocketed, lobbyists fended off new regulation, and corporate access to Washington decision makers grew even more robust.

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