President Trump Issues Executive Order for Agency Regulatory Accountability

On January 18, President Trump issued an Executive Order intended to increase the democratic accountability of executive branch agencies' regulatory activities. It requires senior appointees of the President to initiate the  Administrative Procedure Act (APA) process process at their agency, to sign finalized rules, and to approve their agency's regulatory agenda. The idea behind this executive order is to help ensure that federal agency heads chosen by the President – officials at least indirectly accountable through national elections – take responsibility for the actions of the agencies they oversee rather than pass of significant rulemaking and regulatory implementation decisions to subordinates who are insulated from the democratic process. Since federal agency heads chosen by the President are removable by the President, the Executive Order is thus a measure for increasing the President's responsibility for regulatory undertakings by the executive branch.

President Trump's Executive Order is consonant with the constitutional separation of powers. It doesn't reduce the powers of any particular executive branch agency, nor does it transfer any power away from the executive branch to the other branches. No lengthy or expensive process requirements are involved. Indeed, the Executive Order appears to be a common-sense measure for democratic accountability. Despite the late hour of the Executive Order's release, it would be to the next Administration's credit to retain and follow the Order. 

Report Evaluates FCC's Increasingly Expensive Regulations

CEI's February 21 Regulatory Report Card on the Federal Communications Commission offers a concise overview of the costliness of complying with FCC regulations. Anyone who follows FCC policy and takes an interest in regulatory reform should keep a copy of this publication handy for reference.

Authored by Ryan Young, CEI Fellow in Regulatory Affairs, the Regulatory Report Card puts the cost of FCC regulations "at $142 billion per year, making it the third most expensive branch of regulation." Also, the number of new regulations the FCC imposes annually is staggering. To wit, "Federal agencies published a total of 3,706 final rules in 2012. Of those, 108 came from the FCC, for an average of one new final FCC rule every 2.3 working days." Moreover:

The fall 2012 Unified Agenda lists 86 rules from the FCC in various stages of the regulatory pipeline. Seven of them are "economically significant," meaning they impose at least $100 million in economic impact in a given year.

For more facts and figures revealing the FCC's trend of increasing regulation despite the growth of competitive market conditions, see the Regulatory Report Card. 

President Obama's Missing Federal Regulatory Agenda

Every six months OMB is supposed to publish an updated edition of the Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions. The Agenda that should have been published last Spring never appeared, and now it's almost time for the Fall Agenda and its supplemental Regulatory Plan to be published.

The Regulatory Agenda is supposed to be an important tool to monitor the Administration's regulatory activity, and it is used by industry, consumer groups, scholars, and interested members of the public to keep up with the status of pending and planned regulations.

It may be that in light of the Obama Administration's regulatory onslaught, President Obama preferred not to call attention to the heightened regulatory activity of the federal government. But that's not a reason -- or at least it's never been thought so before -- for non-compliance with the requirement to issue the Regulatory Agenda on a semi-annual basis.

For more on this, and the Obama Administration's record-setting regulatory activity, see this very good piece, President Obama's Hidden Tax, in Forbes by Wayne Crews.