Twice a year, in the spring and fall, each federal agency publishes an agenda describing rulemakings under review and actions they expect to take. These agendas -- though frequently inaccurate in their predictions -- provide an important window into the administration’s regulatory priorities and objectives. OMB Watch examined the agendas of three agencies -- the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) -- to see what has changed during the Bush administration. The following provides the results.

• Agency Summaries. OMB Watch summarizes the changes over the last two years in agency regulatory agendas from the:
  • Environmental Protection Agency;
  • Food and Drug Administration; and
  • Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
• Rules withdrawn.* We provide a list and brief description of rules withdrawn by EPA, FDA, and OSHA, organized by:
  • "Economically significant" rules, which have a total estimated impact of at least $100 million, including benefits; and
  • "Other significant" rules, which are not economically significant but are considered significant by the agency.
• Tracking charts.* To track how agency agendas have changed, OMB Watch has put together a single document, compiling information on each agenda item listed from Fall 2000 to Spring 2003, for the following agencies:
  • Food and Drug Administration (within Health and Human Services)
  • Occupational Safety and Health Administration (within the Dept. of Labor);
  • Environmental Protection Agency, with further breakdowns by issue:
    • General
    • Clean Air Act
    • Atomic Energy Act
    • Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act
    • Toxic Substances Control Act
    • Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act
    • Resource Conservation and Recovery Act
    • Oil Pollution Act and Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act
    • Clean Water Act
    • Safe Drinking Water Act and the Shore Protection Act
• Breakdown tables.* These tables provide data on EPA, FDA and OSHA rules added to and withdrawn from agency agendas under the Bush administration.
• About the Data. This explains the terms and data collection methods used by OMB Watch in compiling information from agency regualtory agendas.
• Current and past agendas. Agency agendas can be viewed through the Federal Register or the Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval. Unfortunately, these web sites do not provide tracking charts, as OMB Watch has provided, to see how the agendas are altered over time.

* These documents were updated in May of 2003 based on the Spring 2003 Agenda.