Political 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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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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Fast-track list fast producing results

Mar 24, 2005 by Guest Blogger

The fast-track list of anti-regulatory "reforms" that OIRA released in December, urging agencies to propel to the top of their priorities, is now yielding results. The mercury rule is out, and just last week the Department of Education announced its guidance "clarifying" (that is, gutting) the standards for ensuring gender equity in higher education under Title IX.

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Fast Track List

Download the fast track list from the December report -- a list of deregulatory plans in early stages of the rulemaking process, which OIRA prompted the agencies to propel to high-priority status.

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White House Hit List

Download the White House's own hit list from the Dec. 2004 report -- not to be confused with the industry-nominated hit list from that same report, from which OIRA has recently announced 76 endorsed reg "reform" items.

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Pesticide info: too pesky a burden for business?

Mar 24, 2005 by Guest Blogger

As required by law, EPA calls on makers of pesticides to report on the "composition, toxicity, potential human exposure, environmental properties and ecological effects, and efficacy" of pesticides, so that the agency can "assess the human health and environmental risks associated with the product" and "ensure that pesticide residues in food meet the 'reasonable certainty of no harm' risk standard." We need to make sure that we aren't poisoning ourselves with pesticides, and an important component of our protection is the information that pesticide makers must disclose about the pesticides th

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