The House passed an appropriations bill June 28 that prevents parts of the executive branch from spending Fiscal Year 2008 funds on the implementation of President George W. Bush's controversial executive order amending the regulatory process. The Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act, FY 2008, (H.R. 2829) was amended by voice vote late on the night of June 27 and was passed the next day. The bill provides funding for everything from the Treasury Department and the Executive Office of the President to the Federal Election Commission and the U.S. Tax Court.

Among a series of amendments to the appropriations bill offered on the House floor was an amendment sponsored by Reps. Brad Miller (D-NC) and Linda Sanchez (D-CA). The amendment prohibits the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) from spending money to implement any part of Executive Order 13422, which was signed Jan. 18. The Miller-Sanchez amendment reads:

Sec. 901. None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to implement Executive Order 13422.

The Senate is expected to take up its general government appropriations legislation in July. It is not clear whether the Senate will address this issue, and, if it does, whether it will use the same language as the House. If the language is the same as the House, then the item will not be debated during a House-Senate conference. If the Senate language is different than the House or is absent, then it will the subject of a conference. Even before the defunding language was inserted in the House appropriations bill, Bush's senior advisors indicated in a Statement of Administration Policy they will recommend a veto of the legislation because of other provisions in the bill.

Miller, the chair of the Science Committee's Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, and Sanchez, the chair of the Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law, through their respective subcommittees, held hearings on the E.O. to investigate the potential impacts of Bush's amendments. Hearing witnesses and other critics of the E.O., including OMB Watch, argued the changes will further centralize regulatory power in the White House and shift power away from agencies to which Congress gives the power to enact public health and safety protections.

E.O. 13422 amended a Clinton-era executive order governing how the regulatory process works within federal agencies and OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). E.O. 13422:

• shifts the criterion for promulgating regulations from the identification of a problem like public health or environmental protection to the identification of a "specific market failure";
• makes the agencies' Regulatory Policy Officer a presidential appointee and gives that person the authority to commence an agency rulemaking and to decide what is included in the Regulatory Plan, unless specifically otherwise authorized by the agency head;
• requires 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"; and
• requires "significant" and "economically significant" (those that are estimated to have at least a $100 million effect on the economy, among other criteria) guidance documents to go through the same OMB review process as proposed regulations before agencies can issue them.

On the same day that E.O. 13422 was issued, OMB issued its Final Bulletin for Agency Good Guidance Practices which further explains how agencies are to comply with the new requirements governing guidance documents. Agencies issue guidance documents to clarify regulatory obligations of regulated industries and to explain complicated technical issues to those agency employees overseeing regulatory issues and to regulated industries. The E.O. and the Guidance Bulletin take effect July 24. The appropriations bill covers government spending for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, 2007.