Yesterday, Reg•Watch blogged about how Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats are calling for the resignation of the acting-chair of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Nancy Nord. Without Nord, CPSC would be unable to conduct formal business likely making consumer product problems worse for Americans, at least in the short term.

The current head of the CPSC is lobbying against legislation that would strengthen her agency, The New York Times reports: On the eve of an important Senate committee meeting to consider the legislation, Nancy A. Nord, the acting chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, has asked lawmakers in two letters not to approve the bulk of legislation that would increase the agency's authority, double its budget and sharply increase its dwindling staff.

Every two weeks, in OMB Watch's e-newsletter The Watcher, we analyze a few recent issues in regulatory policy. Here are the articles from the October 23 issue: While Feds Dither, States Move to Regulate Greenhouse Gases Kansas has rejected an air permit for proposed power plants due to the threat of the resulting greenhouse gas emissions. The decision makes Kansas the latest state to take proactive steps to stem greenhouse gas emissions while federal agencies and Congress delay action. Read more... Bush Administration Tries to Reverse Old-Growth Forest Protection Plan

Sen. Wayne Allard (R-CO) has introduced an amendment to the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations bill (H.R. 3043) that would threaten the budgets of important federal programs. The amendment would tie a program's budget to the White House Office of Management and Budget's Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) — a flawed measure of a program's effectiveness and efficiency. Allard's amendment would make PART ratings a trigger for budget cuts. If a program is rated "ineffective" by OMB assessors, the budget of that program would be automatically cut by 10 percent.