PRESS RELEASE
-For Immediate Release-
January 19, 2007

Contact: Brian Gumm, (202) 234-8494, bgumm@ombwatch.org

Bush Administration Undermines Public Protections with Executive Order Amendments

WASHINGTON, Jan. 19, 2007—On Jan. 18, President Bush issued amendments to Executive Order (E.O.) 12866, which further centralize regulatory power in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and shift it away from the federal agencies given this power by legislative enactments. A preliminary OMB Watch analysis shows that the changes to the E.O.:

• Shift the criterion for promulgating regulations from the identification of a problem like public health or environmental protection to the identification of "…the specific market failure (such as externalities, market power, lack of information)…that warrant new agency action."


• Require guidance documents to go through the same OMB review process as proposed regulations before agencies can issue them, which will lead to significant delays.


• Also require "significant" guidance documents (those that are estimated to have at least a $100 million effect on the economy, among other criteria) to go through the same OMB review process as "significant" regulations.


• Make the agencies' Regulatory Policy Officer a presidential appointment and give that person the approval authority for any commencement or inclusion of any rulemaking in the Regulatory Plan unless specifically authorized by the agency head. This will further politicize the agency rulemaking process.


• Require each agency to estimate the "combined aggregate costs and benefits of all its regulations planned for that calendar year to assist with the identification of priorities," which will be overseen by the Regulatory Policy Officer. This approach has been deemed to have little value by experts.

"The revised Executive Order that results from these amendments is a further threat to public protections from an administration committed to elevating special interests over public interests," said Rick Melberth, Director of Regulatory Policy at OMB Watch. "It substitutes free market criteria for the public values of health, safety, and environmental protections, and substitutes executive authority for legislative authority."

More details are available in OMB Watch's analysis, which can be found at /files/regs/EO12866_amendments_analysis.pdf.

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