Regulation

Regulatory costs inched ahead this week, adding only $24 million in costs.  There were two Affordable Care Act regulations and a final Dodd-Frank rule, but the past five days saw little new regulatory activity.    

Regulatory Toplines

The debate over immigration, processing new arrivals and addressing millions of undocumented immigrants, receives plenty of political attention, but few focus on the bureaucratic apparatus that surrounds our current immigration system.

Today, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a rule to curb sulfur emissions in gasoline.  The proposal, so-called Tier-3, would cut sulfur levels by more than 60 percent, or down to 10 parts per million.  The resulting pollution decreases aim to cut smog and improve the efficiency of passenger vehicles. 

The administration added $215 million in regulatory costs this week, and published 1.7 million paperwork burden hours.  Ten different regulations imposed costs, with six measures imposing paperwork hours.   

Regulatory Toplines

Following the release of a report on the nation’s manufacturing employee skills gap by The Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte in October 2011, concern among American manufacturers has focused on how to resolve this seemingly persistent human capital problem.  The good news is that there are nationwide human resource development initiatives now underway to address this manufacturing sector employee skills gap.  In this report, we describe some of the key training initiatives that have emerged recently to close the critical skills gap.  To address the more immediate short-ter

As the Affordable Care Act (ACA) celebrates its third anniversary, the law has already imposed $21 billion in private-sector burdens, $9.8 billion in unfunded state liabilities, and 111 million paperwork burden hours.  When the American Action Forum (AAF) reviewed the law’s regulatory impact last year, the ACA had imposed a combined cost of $12.4 billion and 50 million hours, meaning in the last year the administration has more than doubled the cost of implementation and

On Friday, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski announced his resignation. Originally a member of President Obama’s transition team, Chairman Genachowski was appointed to the position in the summer of 2009. Much of his record reflects the administration’s priorities on communications and technology issues.

Regulators added approximately $200 million in costs this week, with no quantified benefits.  However, an Affordable Care Act (ACA) regulation reduced paperwork by 341,000 hours, causing a net decrease in hours.  

Regulatory Toplines

It is not uncommon for presidential administrations to issue a large number of regulations in the interregnum between Election Day and the inauguration. These are often called “midnight regulations” because, for outgoing presidents, they are a final effort to shape the nation’s policies.

No one in Washington, D.C. is particularly happy with the nation’s current regulatory apparatus. Progressives argue that the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the entity within the president’s Office of Management and Budget tasked with reviewing agency rules, stifles consumer and environmental protections and places too much emphasis on costs. Conservatives, on the other hand, protest that OIRA is a feckless political arm of the White House, loathe to curtail egregious rules issued by cabinet agencies and exercising zero control over independent agencies.