[PDF] Federal Regulation And Regulatory Reform eBook

Author : U S Government Accountability Office (G
Publisher : BiblioGov
Page : 34 pages
File Size : 42,99 MB
Release : 2013-06
Category :
ISBN : 9781289023577

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Federal regulation is a basic tool of government. Agencies issue thousands of rules and regulations each year to achieve goals such as ensuring that workplaces, air travel, and foods are safe; that the nation's air, water and land are not polluted; and that the appropriate amount of taxes are collected. The costs of these regulations are estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and the benefits estimates are even higher. Over the past 25 years, a variety of congressional and presidential regulatory reform initiatives have been instituted to refine the federal regulatory process. This testimony discusses findings from the large number of GAO reports and testimonies prepared at the request of Congress to review the implementation of regulatory reform initiatives. Specifically, GAO discusses common strengths and weaknesses of existing reform initiatives that its work has identified. GAO also addresses some general opportunities to reexamine and refine existing initiatives and the federal regulatory process to make them more effective. GAO's prior reports and testimonies contain a variety of recommendations to improve particular reform initiatives and aspects of the regulatory process.

Author : Stuart Shapiro
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 184 pages
File Size : 31,67 MB
Release : 2014-01-21
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1136169636

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Regulation has become a front-page topic recently, often referenced by politicians in conjunction with the current state of the U.S. economy. Yet despite regulation’s increased presence in current politics and media, The Politics of Regulatory Reform argues that the regulatory process and its influence on the economy is misunderstood by the general public as well as by many politicians. In this book, two experienced regulation scholars confront questions relevant to both academic scholars and those with a general interest in ascertaining the effects and importance of regulation. How does regulation impact the economy? What roles do politicians play in making regulatory decisions? Why do politicians enact laws that require regulations and then try to hamper agencies abilities to issue those same regulations? The authors answer these questions and untangle the misperceptions behind regulation by using an area of regulatory policy that has been underutilized until now. Rather than focusing on the federal government, Shapiro and Borie-Holtz have gathered a unique dataset on the regulatory process and output in the United States. They use state-specific data from twenty-eight states, as well as a series of case studies on regulatory reform, to question widespread impressions and ideas about the regulatory process. The result is an incisive and comprehensive study of the relationship between politics and regulation that also encompasses the effects of regulation and the reasons why regulatory reforms are enacted.

Author :
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 49,29 MB
Release : 2003
Category :
ISBN :

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Federal regulation can be defined broadly as federal requirements, directives, standards, or procedures, backed by the use of penalties or other sanctions, intended specifically to modify the behavior of state and local governments, private institutions, businesses, and individuals. Congress and the President have made numerous attempts to reform government regulation over the last 3 decades. Regulatory reform efforts have centered on several policy issue areas that include requiring agencies to prepare cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analyses for major regulations, centralizing mandatory review and clearance of new regulations, setting expiration dates on regulations (forcing a new review of a regulation before it is continued), and expanding the role of judicial review. The heart of the debate over regulatory reform is the tension between the costs imposed by federal regulations, in terms of both dollars and government intrusiveness, and protecting public health, safety, and the environment. Several factors have made it troublesome to resolve regulatory issues and to pass comprehensive regulatory reform. The difficulty is compounded by the fact that costbenefit analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, and risk-assessment analysis, primary tools used by regulators, rely on subjective assumptions, incomplete data collection, and other uncertainties. In its efforts to address regulatory issues, Congress has enacted laws to lessen the regulatory burden and intrusiveness of federal regulation. These laws include the Paperwork Reduction Act, the Regulatory Flexibility Act, the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act, the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act, and the Congressional Review Act, among others. The purpose of this report is to provide Congress with an overview of regulatory reform efforts and a summary of regulatory issues. The report also briefly describes what issues have been most contentious and prevalent over the last decade or more, and what Presidents have attempted, on their own authority, to evaluate better both the necessity and the costs of regulations. Also discussed are laws passed by Congress that have a direct or indirect impact on the regulatory process, those that affect the analysis of the costs and benefits of regulations, and other laws that allow for congressional, executive, and judicial review of regulations.