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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Congress Defies White House, Saves Overtime for Millions

Both the Senate Appropriations Committee and the House of Representatives have defied a White House veto threat and voted to save overtime rights for millions of workers.

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Cost-benefit analysis: still so very wrong

Sep 20, 2004 by Guest Blogger

Three studies were widely reported in the press and converted into political and scholarly gospel for what they purportedly proved with unassailable quantitative analysis: that government regulation of the public interest is ultimately irrational, as regulations’ costs exponentially outpaced their benefits. In more recent years, Professors Lisa Heinzerling and Richard Parker have scrutinized those studies, claim by claim, number by number, and discovered methodological flaws and biases so severe that the studies should be dumped on the junk science trash heap once and for all.

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FDA Modernization Act of 1997: Clinical Trial Data Bank

42 U.S.C. § 282 Sec. 282. - Director of National Institutes of Health (j) Data bank of information on clinical trials for drugs for serious or life-threatening diseases and conditions

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House Votes to Save Overtime

Sep 9, 2004 by Guest Blogger

The House of Representatives defied a White House veto threat and voted 223-193 in favor of the Obey amendment, which effectively overturns Department of Labor regulations that threatened the overtime rights of 6 million workers.

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White House Threatens to Veto Obey Amendment

Sep 9, 2004 by Guest Blogger

In a statement of administrative policy (SAP) released yesterday, the White House threatened to veto the Obey Amendment, which would preserve the increase in the minimum salary below which overtime is guaranteed, while protecting many of those who now receive overtime from losing their privilege under the new overtime law.

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OMB Watch Statement in Support of Amendment to Protect Overtime

OMB Watch has sent a letter to members of Congress urging them to vote in favor of the Obey amendment to the Department of Labor appropriations bill. The Obey amendment will repeal DOL's final overtime regulations, which are projected to threaten the overtime rights of six million workers. OMB Watch believes that this amendment is an important opportunity for Congress to send this administration the message that regulatory policy should be used to serve the public interest. The Department of Labor has not lived up to that obligation during the course of this administration.

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Tell Congress to save overtime rights

Sep 8, 2004 by Guest Blogger

Congress has an opportunity to undo the administration's rollback of overtime protections. A final rule from the Department of Labor would disqualify over 6 million workers from overtime protections. An amendment to the Labor appropriations bill, called the Obey amendment, would restore overtime rights while preserving an inflation adjustment to the minimum salary that determines automatic overtime eligibility.

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Politics over Science: Change in Recovery Plan for Salmon Smells Fishy

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) announced August 31 it will not consider removing dams in the Columbia and Snake rivers in order to save the endangered salmon population. The announcement contradicts twenty years of research by both environmental groups and government agencies that supports breaching the dams as the most effective way to save the endangered fish population.

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FDA Quietly Drops Rule to Protect Recipients of Contaminated Blood

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) quietly abandoned work on a proposal to protect recipients of plasma-derived products, according to the agency's most recent statement of its regulatory priorities for the next six months. The proposal was initially placed on the FDA's regulatory agenda, a semiannual publication of the agency's recent activities and upcoming regulatory priorities, back in 1999 in response to a House committee report identifying weaknesses in the FDA's efforts to protect the nation's blood supply from infectious agents.

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Cost-benefit analysis: not exactly neutral

Sep 3, 2004 by Guest Blogger

Proponents of cost-benefit analysis in regulatory policy claim it is simply a neutral tool (that only coincidentally favors industry). Suppose CBA had been applied back in the 70s, when agencies issued many protections of the public interest that we know have been overwhelmingly successful. It could have changed history for the worse: The first wave of modern environmental protection, beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, cleaned up the air and water, protected fragile ecosystems, and achieved great gains in public health — without reliance on cost-benefit analysis, and clearly without

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