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Source: Daily Environment Report: News Archive > 2011 > January > 01/27/2011 > News > Congress: Republicans Welcome Obama Order to Cut Regulatory Burden, Still Vow to Target EPA
Congress
Republicans Welcome Obama Order to Cut Regulatory Burden, Still Vow to Target EPA
Republicans on a House Energy and Commerce Committee oversight panel told the Obama administration's top regulatory official Jan. 26 that the president's executive order to reduce regulatory burdens does not fully address troublesome environmental regulations and that they still plan to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its authority over greenhouse gas emissions.
The hearing before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations—the first since Republicans took control of the House vowing to block EPA's regulation of emissions from power plants and other sources—focused on whether an array of Obama administration regulations are overly burdensome for business and hurt job growth.
But Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and other Republicans on the panel repeatedly pressed a White House Office of Management and Budget official, Cass Sunstein, on whether EPA gives enough consideration to the costs of its regulations.
Upton, who committee aides say is readying legislation to remove EPA's authority to regulate such emissions, said at the hearing that all members of the energy committee have been urged “to track down burdensome regulations that choke investment and destroy jobs.”
“We will identify these regulations, shine a light on them, and then seek repeal,” Upton said.
Upton; Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee; and House Energy and Power Subcommittee Chairman Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) issued a statement late Jan. 25 vowing to work together to set “a path forward to permanently eliminate the threat of greenhouse gas regulation through the Clean Air Act.”
“This Congress has no intention of allowing the administration to regulate that which it has been unable to legislate,” they said, referring to cap-and-trade legislation supported by Obama that failed in the Senate last summer.
Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) told Sunstein at the Jan. 26 hearing that Republicans are unclear as to whether the Obama executive order, issued Jan. 18, goes far enough in alleviating regulatory burdens. According to its most recent regulatory agenda, the administration has more than 4,000 regulations under development, while “EPA alone has finalized 928 regulations since the start of this administration,” Stearns said.
Sunstein Touts Executive Order
Sunstein, who as head of OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs coordinates regulatory development across an array of agencies, said the executive order signed by Obama Jan. 18 (Executive Order No. 13,563) builds on previous executive orders to improve the regulatory system issued by President Clinton and President Reagan.
The Obama order outlines six broad provisions, directing agencies to use the “least burdensome tools for achieving regulatory requirements” and to seek the views of affected parties even in advance of rulemakings (12 DEN A-9, 1/19/11).
Sunstein emphasized other parts of the Obama order that direct agencies to harmonize and coordinate rules where possible in recognition that some industries face redundant or overlapping requirements by multiple agencies. The executive order also calls on agencies to conduct a “retrospective analysis” of existing rules, the OIRA administrator said, as well as periodic reviews of rules that might be outmoded, ineffective, insufficient, or excessively burdensome.
Federal agencies are to produce preliminary plans for their periodic reviews of significant rules and submit those plans to OIRA within 120 days of the order's Jan. 18 signing, he said.
Congressmen Seek Assurances
Several members questioned Sunstein repeatedly about whether EPA rules would in fact be covered by the Obama executive order, citing media reports in which an EPA spokesman suggested the agency's health rules might not be affected directly. Sunstein testified that EPA rules are in general covered by the order.
“Well, somehow they [EPA] got the word that they didn't” apply to agency rules, Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) told Sunstein. He asked Sunstein whether the agency had received private assurances from the administration—what Griffith termed a “get-out-of-jail-free card”—that EPA would be shielded from the requirements.
“I'm confident there was not a wink or a nod or some side conversation” in which the agency was assured it would be exempted from the order's requirements, Sunstein said.
The ranking Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), and other Democrats said Republicans were engaging in little more than political rhetoric in highlighting the burdens of federal regulations when a lack of regulatory oversight was to blame for much of the recent economic downturn. They said Republicans were following the same anti-regulatory strategy the party used following the 1994 elections in which they wrested control of the House after decades of Democratic control.
Waxman said Republicans in the 1990s used “alarming anecdotes” including allegations that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's bloodborne pathogens rule “killed the tooth fairy” by barring parents from taking home their children's baby teeth following visits to the dentist.
Such anecdotes “shared two major traits,” Waxman said. “They sound compelling, but they were simply not true,” he said.
“We need to remember that federal regulations also play a vital role in growing our economy and protecting our health and environment,” Waxman said.
By Dean Scott
Full text of President Obama's Jan. 18 executive order (Executive Order No. 13,563) is available at http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2011/pdf/2011-1385.pdf.
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