White House Influence and Interference

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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Regulatory Policy Developments: 1996

Note: These archive links take you to articles from our old website. HOME SEARCH Regulatory News Sorted By Date 1996 Regulatory Fights Likely to Continue (12/31/96) Even before the 105th Congress convenes, public interest groups are gearing up for another round of fights to protect public safeguards. Find out what will be happening with regulatory reform, federal mandates, and local flexibility/devolution.

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Deadly food poisoning breaks out while White House fiddles

Apr 9, 2005 by Guest Blogger

Listeria — the deadly foodborne pathogen with the second highest hospitalization rate and single highest fatality rate of all foodborne pathogens — is breaking out all over: FDA has ordered a nationwide recall of Sea Specialties brand smoked salmon, while a Michigan sausage maker, a Florida maker of chicken meat wraps, and a California producer of teriyaki chicken products all announced voluntary recalls of their products this week, because of potential Listeria contamination.

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Agencies Continue to Abandon Protective Plans

Key agencies charged with protecting public health, safety and the environment continued to abandon work on long-identified priorities for new or improved regulatory safeguards, according to the fall 2004 Unified Agenda released last December.

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White House Adds Rule to Hit List After Calling it 'Accomplishment'

Just three months after touting an interim rule controlling Listeria in ready-to-eat meats as a "regulatory reform accomplishment," the White House added that same rule to a list of regulations to be weakened or eliminated. Corporate special interests nominated the Listeria rule for rollbacks in response to a call from the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which used its annual draft report on the costs and benefits of regulations last February to request industry's nominations for regulatory protections to be weakened or eliminated.

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Sunset, Results Commission Proposals Likely

Both the White House and congressional Republicans have vowed to introduce legislative packages that would force programs to fight for their lives every 10 years and would link controversial performance ratings to decisions about the very structure of government.

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Playing politics with kids and cancer

Mar 29, 2005 by Guest Blogger

What low won't they stoop to? The White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs has once again been playing around with the technical analyses that inform regulatory protections, rigging the tools so that they lead to weaker protections that do more to save corporate profits than to protect the people.

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Regulatory Record: A Pattern of Failure

Read The Bush Regulatory Record: A Pattern of Failure, a report building on prior analyses of key agency agendas with an in-depth look at the fall 2003 and spring 2004 agendas.

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PART of the Problem

Mar 25, 2005 by Guest Blogger

OMB Watch's budget team has an op-ed on TomPaine.com -- "All PART of the Game" -- detailing the gap between White House rhetoric and political reality belying the White House's claims that its budget cuts to the Community Development Block Grant and other vital, effective programs are justified, somehow, on the basis of program performance.

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More on the Imperial Presidency

Mar 25, 2005 by Guest Blogger

Be sure to check out the excellent cover story of the latest issue of National Journal, which fleshes out more details on the Bush administration's drive to consolidate as much power as possible over the executive branch and install an Imperial Presidency. The article focuses on the many ways the White House is seizing power at the expense of the long-time agency workers who have, in recent years, been the source of revelations that the administration has be

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Waxman demands OIRA disclosure

Mar 24, 2005 by Guest Blogger

A while ago we reported on OIRA's secret meetings with industry to hatch anti-regulatory plans for the 109th Congress. Now Reps. Henry Waxman and Stephen Lynch have written Graham to demand he disclose information relating to those meetings.

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