Twice a year, in the spring and fall, each federal agency publishes an agenda describing rulemakings under review and actions they expect to take. These agendas -- though frequently inaccurate in their predictions -- provide an important window into the administration’s regulatory priorities and objectives. OMB Watch examined the agendas of three agencies -- the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) -- to see what has changed during the Bush administration. The following provides the results.

January 2003 Update The Bush administration has advanced very few significant health, safety and environmental protections over the last two years -- much fewer than the two previous administrations -- and is quietly scuttling work on a host of protective standards in the regulatory pipeline, according to data compiled by OMB Watch.

OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) is instructing federal agencies to evaluate hundreds of regulatory recommendations submitted by outside parties as part of its new annual report on the costs and benefits of regulation.

Using its regulatory review authority, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) blocked an EPA effort to protect soil and drinking water from excessive levels of manganese -- an industrial by-product linked to numerous health problems, including respiratory problems, sexual dysfunction, nervous system issues, mental and emotional disturbances, as well as manganism, a disease with symptoms similar to Parkinson's.