The Center for Effective Government (formerly OMB Watch) ceased operations as of March 2016. The majority of work and materials has been passed on to the Project On Government Oversight (POGO). This site is being maintained as an archive of materials produced.
Has the Obama administration unleashed a regulatory "tsunami" as House and Senate Republicans charge? Has this administration issued more significant final rules than past administrations? Contrary to the rhetoric of the business community and its allies on Capitol Hill, hard research shows the answer is an unambiguous no.
Just before they left town for the July 4th break, members of Congress finally voted to prevent a doubling of student loan interest rates for one year with mere hours to spare. Unfortunately, they paid for it by reducing other educational programs. If we want an educated workforce in the future, we need more permanent fixes to make college affordable for Americans.
By refusing to hearAmerican Tradition Partnership v. Bullock, the Montana case on corporate election spending, the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed on June 25 that corporations can spend unlimited money to influence the outcome of political campaigns.
On June 26, a federal appeals court upheld the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act (CAA). The decision reaffirms the EPA's ability to protect our health and the environment from air pollution and allows it to continue combating climate change.
Transparency isn't typically the first thing that comes to mind about the 2010 health care law. However, the law puts more health care information in the hands of consumers and gives the public new tools for combating waste and fraud.
For more than a decade, the mining industry has been waging a war to cast doubt on scientific studies showing that diesel exhaust causes lung cancer. Industry lost that fight on June 12 when the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) voted unanimously to designate diesel exhaust as a known cause of lung cancer. IARC’s conclusion comes more than a decade after the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) adopted a standard that reduced miners' exposure to diesel particulate matter – a prudent move on MSHA's part in the face of industry criticism.
On June 19, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a policy that establishes a public online database of credit card complaints from customers. The database allows consumers shopping for a credit card to view data about other customers' experiences in order to avoid abusive practices and poor customer service.
When the federal government is handing out thousands of contracts to more than half a million contractors, it's important to have a robust system for tracking the companies that receive each contract. Earlier this month, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report on the federal government's use of a private, proprietary corporate identification system to track federal contractors and award recipients. Because corporations are continually acquiring new firms and/or merging with others, it is often difficult to keep track of which companies are actually responsible for the work the government has contracted out. The report recommended the government adopt a new approach to tracking this information.
In April, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved reforms to modernize the disclosure requirements for broadcasters operating on the public airwaves. The rule will expose the influence of money in politics by making information about who is financing political advertising available online. However, the transparency rule is under attack: broadcasters quickly filed suit against the FCC, while House Republicans attached a policy provision to a spending bill that would block the rule from taking effect.
