October 14, 2020 | By: Mark Febrizio & Daniel R. Pérez
This public interest comment begins by summarizing DHS's proposed rule "Collection and Use of Biometrics by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services," and discussing the statutory authority delegated to DHS. It then evaluates the department’s regulatory impact analysis, emphasizing the rule’s failure to comply with established requirements for regulatory analysis. Then, our comment argues that the rule’s 30-day comment period should be reopened to allow the public to have a meaningful opportunity to comment. We conclude by summarizing the key recommendations included in the comment.
November 12, 2018 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration issued a request for public comments on developing the administration's approach to consumer privacy. This public interest comment provides an overview of the agency's proposed approach to guide federal policymaking, and provides three core recommendations (1) Privacy regulation should be based on consumers' value, (2) the benefits of regulation should exceed social costs, and (3) future research should be focused on improving benefit-cost analysis of privacy regulations.
September 07, 2018 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
This comment argues that the Dept. of Education's proposal to rescind its 2016 change to the definition of misrepresentation and to change its 2016 approach making a priori assumptions about the quality of non-profit and for-profit schools better complies with existing regulatory requirements. The Department should retain borrowers’ ability to file affirmative claims, collect additional data to inform future rulemaking, and more thoroughly consider the net impact of its proposed rules on processing borrower claims on a case-by-case basis.
June 29, 2018 | By: Daniel R. Pérez & Lisa Zimmer
The Department of Homeland Security is proposing to eliminate its international entrepreneur program, which was created in 2017, despite the agency's previous findings that the program will increase economic growth, job creation, and U.S. based innovation. The proposal also runs contrary to the administration's declared policy of shifting towards a more merit-based immigration system, decreasing regulatory costs, and demonstrated early success from the program.
March 29, 2017 | By: Sofie E. Miller & Daniel R. Pérez
On March 29th, the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship met to consider legislative reforms that would affect how small businesses confront and shape regulations. This prepared statement for the record focuses on S. 584: Small Business Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act. The analysis suggests that the Committee should: be careful to avoid the problem of double-counting indirect costs, use an evidence-based regulation framework to strengthen retrospective review, and safeguard against unintentionally reducing the efficacy of the existing Small Business Advocacy Review process.
February 13, 2017 | By: Susan E. Dudley, Brian F. Mannix, Sofie E. Miller, & Daniel R. Pérez
In this comment on the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs’ (OIRA) interim guidance on Executive Order 13771, GW Regulatory Studies Center scholars acknowledge that the Order represents a significant departure from past practice, however, they emphasize that the additional budgeting constraints it imposes need not supplant longstanding requirements to examine regulatory benefits as well as costs and to achieve regulatory objectives as cost-effectively as possible. The comment reinforces OIRA’s draft questions and answers, and offers some suggestions for clarification and improvement.
February 13, 2017 | By: Susan E. Dudley, Brian F. Mannix, Sofie E. Miller, & Daniel R. Pérez
In this comment on the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs’ (OIRA) interim guidance on Executive Order 13771, GW Regulatory Studies Center scholars acknowledge that the Order represents a significant departure from past practice, however, they emphasize that the additional budgeting constraints it imposes need not supplant longstanding requirements to examine regulatory benefits as well as costs and to achieve regulatory objectives as cost-effectively as possible. The comment reinforces OIRA’s draft questions and answers, and offers some suggestions for clarification and improvement.
November 16, 2016 | By: Sofie E. Miller, Howard Beales & Daniel R. Pérez
This comment on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) recent Federal Automated Vehicles Policy considers the impact of regulating driverless car technology on innovation and social welfare. NHTSA is correct to be cautious of the effects that a federal policy could have on innovation, particularly because the safety gains from highly automated vehicles (HAV) could be significant. As a result, the agency should avoid any type of premarket approval authority for HAV technology, which could potentially delay the adoption of life-saving innovations and result in thousands of traffic fatalities.
November 08, 2016 | By: Marcus Peacock, Sofie E. Miller & Daniel R. Pérez
Scholars at the GW Regulatory Studies Center show how the U.S. could make regulations more evidence-based in a comment to the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking. Evidence-based regulations plan for, collect, and use evidence to predict, evaluate and improve societal outcomes throughout the rule’s life. This comment lays out a process for producing such rules and provides over a dozen specific recommendations on how the U.S. could better adopt and implement such a system.
October 18, 2016 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
The Department of Homeland Security’s proposed rule would expand the use of its discretionary authority to parole individuals into the United States for reasons of “significant public benefit” to include foreign entrepreneurs looking to start a business in the U.S. DHS recognizes that “the full potential of foreign entrepreneurs to benefit the U.S. economy is presently limited since many…do not qualify under existing nonimmigrant and immigrant classifications.” The rule proposes several criteria for approving applicants on a case-by-case basis. This comment proposes several changes that DHS could make to its proposed rule to maximize its potential benefits.
August 02, 2016 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
The total outstanding balance of student loans is currently estimated to be $1.35 trillion, and default rates among borrowers have reached their highest levels in 20 years. The rule proposed by The Department of Education (ED) would make several amendments to regulations governing its Federal Direct Loan Program, including: 1) an expansion of the conditions wherein ED forgives borrowers’ loan balances, 2) additional provisions that broaden its ability to recover losses from institutions, and 3) expanded financial requirements for postsecondary schools. ED estimates this rule could have annual federal budget impacts of up to$4.23 billion.
May 13, 2016 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
Genetically-modified mosquitoes hold great promise for addressing mosquito-borne diseases that threaten South Florida. Yet, the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District has been waiting since 2011 for approval from FDA to allow the biotechnology company Oxitec to conduct field trials for this promising technology. This public interest comment points out that the trial poses no appreciable risk to human or animal health or the environment. The unusually lengthy timeframe for approval has unnecessarily limited our ability to combat the spread of life-threatening diseases, like Zika and Dengue.
May 12, 2016 | By: Sofie E. Miller, Daniel R. Pérez, Susan E. Dudley & Brian F. Mannix
This public comment suggests several areas of regulatory policy where federal regulations have hindered, rather than helped, competition, and recommends that agencies take this opportunity to reduce these regulatory barriers to competition.
July 1, 2020 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs released the final Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions before the upcoming presidential election this November. The entries listed in the Agenda illustrate that multiple agencies plan to issue more regulatory actions than deregulatory actions in the coming months with substantive rulemakings involving immigration, energy efficiency standards, the regulation of tobacco, and changes to various transfer programs. For those rules expected to have the largest effect on society, agencies are on track to issue twice as many regulatory actions as deregulatory actions.
April 22, 2020 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
A new report by the GW Regulatory Studies Center finds that analysis of public comments can help agencies pick which regulations to evaluate. In addition to feedback about individual regulations that commenters point out as candidates for review, the underlying characteristics of those regulations can be used by agencies to prioritize additional regulations for evaluation.
December 18, 2019 | By: Mark Febrizio & Daniel R. Pérez
The Regulatory Reform Results for Fiscal Year 2019 are out, and OIRA is touting that regulatory agencies produced $13.5 billion in present value cost savings. Beyond the glossy highlights, however, are a few important “firsts” in implementation, such as total agency cost savings falling short of the government-wide targets.
December 11, 2019 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
The Congressional Review Act allows Congress to disapprove regulations issued by agencies and contains a lookback provision that places almost six months of rulemaking in jeopardy of elimination by the next Congress. The window for this period of review opens in 2020, but agencies will have to weigh the tradeoffs of rushing to publish their rules before the window. According to the 2020 House calendar, any rules issued after May 19, 2020 may be subject to review by the 117th Congress. However, historical data suggest the lookback period is more likely to begin sometime in July or early August of 2020.
November 20, 2019 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
This morning, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) released its annual Regulatory Plan and semiannual Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions. Notably absent is the Regulatory Reform Status Report, which tracks executive agency performance in complying with the deregulatory requirements of Executive Order (EO) 13771. With regards to actions listed as active in the Agenda, agencies plan to issue an average of approximately 2.5 significant deregulatory actions for every 1 regulatory action. However, our analysis of economically significant actions suggests a potential shift in agency rulemaking.
October 16, 2019 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
The Department of Education recently published its long-awaited, final rule detailing how the agency will process borrower defense and other loan discharges related to its Federal Direct Loan Program. The final rule applies to all loans disbursed on or after July 1, 2020 and departs from the agency’s approach to adjudicating claims under the Obama administration.
July 03, 2019 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
This regulatory policy insight details the importance of using evidence to inform the development of U.S. privacy policy and identifies the kinds of evidence that would be particularly useful for policymakers to consider.
May 22, 2019 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
The Spring 2019 Unified Agenda includes a total of 3,791 actions, 295 of which are classified as regulatory, 721 as deregulatory, with the remainder exempt or classified as “other.” Of the total number of actions, 177 are economically significant. The agencies with the most deregulatory actions planned are the Department of Transportation (DOT) with 129 actions and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) with 65; these same two agencies have had the most deregulatory actions planned since the Fall 2017 Agenda.
March 13, 2019 | By: Susan E. Dudley & Daniel R. Pérez
Policymakers face demands to act today to protect against a wide range of future risks, and to do so without impeding economic growth. Yet traditional analytical tools may not be adequate to frame the relevant uncertainties and tradeoffs. Challenges such as climate change, nuclear war, and widespread natural disasters don’t lend themselves to decision rules designed for discrete policy questions and marginal analyses. We refer to such issues as “uncertain futures.”
More flexible and dynamic decision-analysis approaches that anticipate the need to learn from experience (and that encourage learning) are essential. Developing a body of research that cuts across disciplines to introduce better tools for anticipating and examining uncertain future risks can lead to policies that lower the probabilities and mitigate the consequences of these uncertain futures while encouraging economic growth and increasing resilience. To this end, the GW Regulatory Studies Center commissioned four papers from leading experts in different fields.
February 6, 2019 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
This commentary presents data illustrating a substantial reduction in regulatory activity during the government shutdown. Interestingly, despite the end of the shutdown on January 25, the regulatory pace has not yet returned to prior levels. This stall in regulatory output has substantial implications for President Trump’s deregulatory agenda. Since regulations take months to years to move through the notice-and-comment process, the administration may be running short on time to get through the items on the president’s agenda.
October 17, 2018 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
In her introduction to the Fall 2018 Regulatory Plan, OIRA Administrator Neomi Rao states that the administration’s regulatory reform efforts will continue to prioritize reforms that target economic growth and foster technological innovation and consumer choice. The Fall 2018 Unified Agenda includes a total of 3,534 regulatory actions—174 of which are economically significant. Of these, 257 are classified as regulatory, 671 as deregulatory, with the remainder exempt or classified as “other.” Compared to the Spring 2018 Agenda, the total number of actions increased from 3,352 to 3,534. The number of active rulemakings in this Agenda increased slightly (2,399 compared to 2,226 last spring). Of those, the number of economically significant actions increased from 88 in the Spring 2018 Agenda to 118 in the Fall 2018 Agenda. Interestingly, of the 118 economically significant actions listed, 26 are deregulatory, 41 are regulatory, 15 are exempt, and the rest are classified as “other.”
October 17, 2018 | Daniel R. Pérez
Pérez provides an overview of the Trump administration's release of the 2018 Fall Agenda and status update on the implementation of Executive Order 13771.
October 12, 2018 | By: Daniel Flores
Daniel Flores is a Majority Staff member of the House Judiciary's Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law, and in this commentary he explains why Congress has long been considering ways to assure legislative activity is animated and guided by the 'Statement of Regulatory Philosophy and Principles' within Executive Order 12866.
September 26, 2018 | By: Mark Febrizio, Daniel R. Pérez, & Zhoudan Xie
This week marks the 25th anniversary of Executive Order 12866, Regulatory Planning and Review. This document, signed by President Clinton in 1993, built on orders from previous administrations to cement the regulatory principles and centralized review that continue to guide the rulemaking process today. Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) Administrators who led this review under presidents Clinton, Bush 43, Obama, and Trump gathered Monday at the George Washington University along with government experts and scholars to discuss why these principles and processes have withstood the test of time across changes in administrations and political parties.
May 30, 2018 | By: Zhoudan Xie & Daniel R. Pérez
This Regulatory Insight addresses the information gap in how regulations are measured when determining their effect on economic growth and other macroeconomic measures by developing a taxonomy of regulatory forms. In partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, this framework allows regulations to be classified by the form they employ to achieve the stated regulatory outcomes. We expect this taxonomy to also be applicable to industries outside of agriculture, and to be utilized by researchers and analysts in a wide range of fields as a framework for informing research on the relative effectiveness of different regulatory forms to address market and social problems.
May 10, 2018 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
The Spring 2018 Unified Agenda includes a total of 3,352 regulatory actions, 234 of which are classified as regulatory, 611 as deregulatory, with the remainder exempt or classified as “other.” Of the total number of actions, 139 are economically significant. The Agenda distinguishes between active regulations (those with milestones within the next 12 months), long-term actions, and completed actions. Of the 2,226 actions listed as active approximately 24% are published for the first time in this Spring Agenda. Altogether, for active actions in the Agenda, executive agencies under the Trump administration plan to take an average of approximately 4 deregulatory actions for every 1 regulatory action.
February 01, 2018 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
In his State of the Union speech last night, President Trump claimed “we have eliminated more regulations in our first year than any administration in history.” Assuming he is referring to previous presidents’ first years in office, comparisons of numbers of regulations repealed support his claim. Still, the historic data reveal some valuable nuance that informs evaluation of the administration’s efforts to reduce the burden of regulation. The data for 2017 are in and our RegStats page contains updated graphs and figures presenting several interesting insights into the administration’s regulatory agenda.
August 28, 2017 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
We're expanding our Reg Stats to include data on the regulatory output of individual federal agencies during different presidents’ tenures in office. Government agencies issue thousands of regulations each year, and it is no small task to identify which among them likely have the most substantial impacts on society. Understanding the volume of economically significant rules issued by regulatory agencies is useful in analyzing regulatory priorities of different administrations and observing significant shifts in regulatory approaches over time.
May 10, 2017 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
The 60 day window for Congress to use the CRA to repeal rules issued during the Obama midnight period is coming to a close. So far, the most visible results of President Trump’s deregulatory agenda have been signing these legislative actions but today's Senate vote on the methane rule resulted in the CRA's first failure under President Trump. In this commentary, Pérez explains how future regulatory reform efforts will require considerably less expeditious legislative and executive branch action.
April 04, 2017 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
Congress continues to make history by exercising its powers under the CRA to eliminate rules issued at the end of the Obama administration. To date, 13 resolutions of disapproval have passed both chambers of Congress; two additional bills have passed the House. President Trump has signed eight of these into law with three additional resolutions awaiting his signature. Finally, the Senate passed two more resolutions on March 30th which should be sent to the president soon. Prior to 2017, Congress had only successfully struck down a single rule using the CRA.
February 15, 2017 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
The 115th Congress has wasted no time in exercising its powers under the Congressional Review Act to eliminate regulations issued by federal agencies during the Obama administration. Currently, eight joint resolutions of disapproval have passed the House—two of which were delivered to the president for his signature on February 6. President Trump signed one of these into law on February 14. This marks the first time in 16 years since Congress has successfully used the CRA to eliminate a regulation.
January 11, 2017 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
The Office of Management and Budget recently published its Exit Memo highlighting several aspects of the agency’s work under President Obama. The memo includes quantitative metrics of the administration’s regulatory output to draw comparisons with regulations issued by agencies under Presidents Clinton and Bush. This commentary describes why measuring regulatory output by comparing economically significant rules is a metric that better characterizes an administration's regulatory priorities.
November 02, 2016 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
The Department of Education (ED) published a final rule concerning its student loan program on November 1, 2016. This rule attracted a great deal of input during its notice and comment period; ED notes that it received comments from over 50,000 parties. The Department completed its review with remarkable speed considering the amount of input received. The final rule could cost taxpayers up to $3.5 billion per year. Notably, the Department published its final rule without making any substantive changes as a result of the public input it received.
September 29, 2016 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
Advocates of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) often cite its contribution to national security in their list of reasons for either maintaining or expanding the program. Providing security is a first-order priority of government, but the contribution of the RFS to national security is widely misrepresented. Understanding this component of the program is necessary in order to conduct a fair assessment of whether its benefits outweigh its costs.
September 20, 2016 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
The U.S. and EU continue to improve outcomes for their citizens through successful regulatory cooperation despite the continued political rhetoric against international trade. On Thursday, September 15, 2016, the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center co-hosted a conference with the EU Delegation to the United States on “U.S.-EU International Regulatory Cooperation in Practice.” The conference brought together senior officials from the European Commission and U.S. government, experts and practitioners in the areas of trade and regulatory cooperation, industry stakeholders, and consumer interest groups.
August 03, 2016 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
The Department of Education’s proposed new regulation regarding student loans is getting a lot of attention. It received almost 7,000 public comments on proposed changes to how it administers its Federal Direct Loan Program and its requirements for post-secondary schools whose students pay for tuition using federally funded student loans. Unfortunately, ED has not done its homework. Our comment on the proposed rule finds that is likely to create more problems than it solves. This rule could end up hurting the poor and costing taxpayers up to $4.23 billion per year.
May 04, 2016 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
The success of populist presidential candidates like Donald Trump is fueled, in part, by a surge in opposition to free trade on both ends of the American political spectrum. Meanwhile, the U.S. and EU continue their negotiation of TTIP aimed at increasing economic growth. A recently published report by the GW Regulatory Studies Center, as part of a two-year grant from the EU to conduct policy research and engage public debate, examines regulatory challenges and opportunities to transatlantic trade.
February 17, 2016 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
Given the escalating concern over the spread of the Zika virus—transmitted mainly by mosquitoes—it is interesting to note that the FDA has sat on a promising remedy for over 4 years. The agency has still not released for public comment its assessment of an application it received back in November of 2011 from the biotech company for a field trial to employ a genetically modified (GM) mosquito with the potential to dramatically reduce the population of these disease-carrying insects.
January 12, 2016 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
In 2015, President Obama’s executive agencies issued 62 economically significant rules—those defined in Executive Order 12866 as likely to have “an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more,” making last year the second most active regulatory year of his presidency. Many of these rules focused on his regulatory priorities. This commentary looks back at the number of regulations published in 2015 and ahead to 2016, evaluating the President’s activity in the context of regulatory output of previous administrations.
December 21, 2015 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
Representatives from Korea’s Public-Private Joint Regulation Advancement Initiative (PPJRAI) recently concluded their visit to the United States, where they met with regulatory experts from both the public and private sectors in Washington, D.C. This public-private initiative constitutes an important part of Korea’s efforts to build on its successful history of regulatory reform and improve the market-oriented features of its regulatory system. The GW Regulatory Studies Center met with representatives from PPJRAI to discuss regulatory reform, including its mandate to improve conditions for small and medium enterprises (SME) operating in the Korean economy.
December 01, 2015 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
As Presidential administrations wind down during their “lame duck” period, their final three months between Election Day and Inauguration Day is usually accompanied by a flurry of last-minute regulatory activity known as the Midnight period. This last-minute increase has direct implications for the quality of review that the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) is able to provide. To get a better sense of what the next Midnight period might mean for the quality of regulatory oversight, we compare President Obama’s current level of regulatory output relative to his predecessors’—Presidents Clinton and Bush.
November 11, 2015 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
Countries engaged in international trade and investment have been largely successful at reducing many of the traditional barriers to the flow of goods, such as tariffs. As a result, trade deals are increasingly prioritizing the elimination of unnecessary regulatory differences between trade partners which act as a lingering barrier to trade, creating inefficiencies that unnecessarily raise costs for businesses and consumers. This commentary addresses an important mechanism in successful international regulatory cooperation involving efforts by trade partners to provide advanced notice of upcoming regulations that are likely to affect international trade and investment.
August 26, 2015 | By: Daniel R. Pérez
International regulatory cooperation is a central component of current U.S. efforts to negotiate international trade agreements. As traditional barriers to trade decline, understanding regulatory impacts on trade and investment is of particular importance for economic growth, given that these agreements include trade partners that accounted for almost $3 trillion in goods and services traded in 2013. Executive Order 13609 tasked executive regulatory agencies with identifying regulations that were likely to have a significant impact on international trade and investment. We examined the performance of agencies in identifying such regulations and our research suggests there is significant room for improvement.
