Know thy government

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Crashing the Government: Corporate Power at OIRA

Now that the administration is moving into power, it's time to stretch beyond our known universe to the nuts and bolts of administrative power wielding. I want to flag one specific agency called the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, a Reagan-era internal executive agency that analyzes all potential regulations for cost/benefit analysis. This paper on what Obama can do with climate change (h/t Scott Paul at the Washington Note) notes.

For several decades, OIRA has been perhaps the most powerful agency in the Executive Branch standing in the way of needed environmental regulation. In the last eight years, the White House, working through OIRA, delayed, relaxed, or rejected many regulatory proposals. Most often OIRA did so for reasons having nothing to do with promoting economically efficient regulations (its ostensible purpose). Indeed, perusal of OIRA's comments on agency proposals reveals almost no engagement with economic issues. It reveals, instead, persistent efforts to water down scientific conclusions about environmental harm and a stubborn insistence that government regulation cannot be effective.

OIRA is situated within the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the sprawling White House office that handles budgeting and management throughout the executive branch, and there's no way of knowing which corporate interests are lobbying or controlling its agenda. And every regulation goes through OIRA. MORE

Pragmatism versus Progressivism

Meanwhile, this post I wrote about a little known bureaucratic threat to good policy called the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the bureau that 'regulates the regulators', received zero comments but several emails from people in decision-making roles who have been fighting this office for years. If Obama makes the right choice in downgrading OIRA's authority, or opens it up to transparency, there's a lot of leverage in achieving good policy ends. Pragmatism is about recognizing and working the levers of power to further good policy-making. Whining about people who disagree with you or say things you don't like so you can feel smart is just that. It's time to start recognizing the difference. Let me just say again that OIRA is really bad news, and its head Susan Dudley was put in as a recess appointment as the top regulatory official at the White House. Here's just one of the adventures she went on, making hundreds of poor people sick through needless exposure to toxic chemicals by gutting the EPA's ability to assess toxins. In the waning days of this administration, OIRA is also gutting the Family Medial Leave Act, limiting access to contraception, and giving away wilderness to oil and gas interests.MORE