The Biden Administration is considering ways to “modernize” regulatory review, changing a process that has been in place for almost 30 years. In a new analysis, AAF’s Director of Regulatory Policy Dan Bosch outlines the existing regulatory-review process and examines the likely changes and their implications for rulemaking. Among other effects, these changes could shift the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs’ (OIRA) posture from a neutral reviewer to more of a pro-regulation advocate.

His central points:

• Likely changes will make regulations appear more net beneficial than they would have previously and also centralize regulatory agenda setting within the OIRA;
• Modifications will likely include major changes to OIRA’s regulatory impact analysis guidance to lower discount rates, include the social cost of carbon, and more explicitly account for distributional effects; and
• The changes will be designed to help the administration use regulation to enact its policy agenda.

Read the analysis.