The Week Ahead for Regulations

In addition to the President’s Budget release, which will detail funding requests for EPA, Dodd-Frank implementation, and some independent agencies, here’s what to look for this week.

Oversight Hearings:

• On February 16, the Energy and Commerce Committee (Subcommittee on Communications and Technology) will hold a hearing on FCC’s budget.  In addition, the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations will hold a hearing on Thursday to review Executive Order 13563. 
• The Financial Services Committee will hold a hearing on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s budget on February 15.
• On February 15, the House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing entitled “Executive Overreach: The President’s Unprecedented ‘Recess’ Appointments.”  Make sure to RSVP to the American Action Network and Crossroads GPS event on executive overreach as well.  The event will be held at the W Hotel on February 14, from 8:45 to noon.   

Regulations:

• In a joint rulemaking, HHS and IRS will publish the final “Uniform Glossary” rule under the Affordable Care Act.  The regulation requires group health plans to format generic and standard language to communicate with beneficiaries.  The rule will cost at least $146 million and impose more than 3 million paperwork hours.  It will be formally published on February 15.
• The Department of Labor (Wage and Hour Division) will publish a 575-page final rule on February 21.  The rule, labeled “economically significant,” will cost employers $14.65 million and impose 94,187 paperwork burden hours; the paperwork burdens add another $5.7 million to total costs. 

Check back for the Forum’s “Week in Regulation” series cataloguing how these rules affect the overall U.S. regulatory environment.