Setting and Enforcing Regulations

Feb 8, 2016

Top 400 Taxpayers See Tax Rates Rise, But There’s More to the Story

As Americans were gathering party supplies to greet the New Year, the Internal Revenue Service released their annual report of cumulative tax data reported on the 400 tax r...

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Feb 4, 2016

Chlorine Bleach Plants Needlessly Endanger 63 Million Americans

Chlorine bleach plants across the U.S. put millions of Americans in danger of a chlorine gas release, a substance so toxic it has been used as a chemical weapon. Greenpeace’s new repo...

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Jan 25, 2016

U.S. Industrial Facilities Reported Fewer Toxic Releases in 2014

The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data for 2014 is now available. The good news: total toxic releases by reporting facilities decreased by nearly six percent from 2013 levels. Howe...

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Jan 22, 2016

Methane Causes Climate Change. Here's How the President Plans to Cut Emissions by 40-45 Percent.

UPDATE (Jan. 22, 2016): Today, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released its proposed rule to reduce methane emissions...

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House Hearing Reveals Unethical Marketing of Vioxx

During a congressional hearing on May 5, the House Government Reform Committee harshly criticized both the Food and Drug Administration and drug makers for their role in approving and marketing Vioxx, an arthritis painkiller linked to heart disease.

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Bush Allows Governors to Challenge Roadless Rule

In yet another attack on our nation's wildlife, the Forest Service published a final rule May 13 that will allow governors to petition for changes to state forest management plans, effectively undoing the Clinton-era forest regulations known as the "roadless rule."

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Homeland Security Wins Power to Waive All Law

A stroke of the pen makes it final: President Bush signed into law the Iraq war supplemental, which includes a controversial provision giving the secretary of homeland security the power to waive all law when securing U.S. borders.

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Unified Agenda out today

May 16, 2005 by Guest Blogger

The semiannual Unified Agenda is available in today's Federal Register. It will eventually be available in database form on this site; until then, here are links to the PDFs of the agendas for certain key agencies:

Consumer Product Safety Commission
EPA
HHS
Interior
Labor
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Transportation
USDA

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Anti-Regulatory Hit List Debated in House Hearing

The Bush administration again defended its anti-regulatory hit list to Congress, this time presenting the initiative as a boon to small manufacturers in a hearing before the House Small Business Committee that also featured renewed calls for regulatory sunsets. The committee's Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform and Oversight held a hearing on April 28 to discuss the White House's hit list of regulatory protections to be weakened or eliminated supposedly for the benefit of the manufacturing sector.

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UMRA, Results Proposals Advance in Budget Resolution

The budget resolution Congress finally agreed upon last week incorporated language that endorses the establishment of a results commission and marks the first steps in the direction of turning the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA) into an insurmountable obstacle for new protections of the public interest.

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Testimony on Hit List Before the House Small Business Committee

Download testimony of Robert Shull before the House Small Business Committee's Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform and Oversight, concerning the OMB anti-regulatory hit list.

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House Considers Anti-Regulatory Hit List

The White House's anti-regulatory hit list took center stage in a House committee hearing, during which GOP members and White House regulatory czar John Graham praised the hit list as a gift to the manufacturing sector while Democratic members criticized the entire project as yet another example of a corporate special interest takeover of government.

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Local Governments Demand UMRA Changes to Avoid Accountability

State and local governments addressed a Senate subcommittee and called for an expansion of provisions in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA) that would further relieve them from their obligations to provide important public protections.

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Corporate-Conservative Alliance Plots Attack on Safeguards

From many small and supposedly disconnected proposals, a larger pattern is emerging: corporate special interests and conservative lawmakers are conspiring to mount a comprehensive assault on regulatory protections, on a scale equivalent to the broad-based attacks of the Contract With America.

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