Even though Sunshine Week is officially this week, the House of Representatives got the ball rolling last Friday. The House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and Procurement Reform (say that ten times fast) held a hearing called "Transparency Through Technology: Evaluating Federal Open-Government Initiatives," although the hearing focused more on spending transparency than anything else. While one would expect that an oversight hearing in the House “evaluating” the Obama administration’s transparency efforts would be contentious, the most surprising aspect of the hearing was that it wasn’t.

Contrary to the recent claims of many House Republicans, regulation can actually be of great benefit to the U.S. economy, as OMB Watch discussed in the latest issue of our newsletter, The Watcher. One place where that is especially true is at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), where regulators ensure not only safe and healthy food and medical products but also provide stability and predictability for the industries they oversee.

Today, a House panel will consider a bill that would create radical and damaging changes to the regulatory process and would undermine safeguards critical to our health, welfare, environment, and economy.

A House panel held a hearing yesterday examining EPA rules on greenhouse gas emissions and grilling air chief Gina McCarthy, criticizing her for not doing enough to count economic costs when writing new rules (even though the Clean Air Act constrains EPA in that department).