|
| | |
REMARKS
TO THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES
THE KEYSTONE CENTER
Washington, DC
June 18, 2002
I
would like to say a few words today about information and regulatory
affairs in the Bush Administration. In order for my remarks to
be placed in a meaningful context, please allow me to offer some
impressions about the history of my Office in OMB, the Office
of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
In
preparing to assume this role, there were three aspects of OIRA's
reputation that were of concern to me. First, there was the charge
that OIRA is the place at OMB where nefarious deals are cut with
lobbyists wearing alligator shoes and Rolex watches. The suspicion
surrounding this charge gained further legitimacy due to the substantial
degree of secrecy, mystery and rumor that has historically surrounded
OIRA's daily activities. Second, there was a related, though not
necessarily consistent, charge that the OIRA career staff represent
a narrow, ideological perspective that is hostile to regulation
of any sort. One version of this charge is that the economics
profession, particularly Chicago-school economics, is the dominant
training and faith of OIRA staff. Finally, there was the charge
that OIRA is clumsy and ineffective, working only at the end of
the decision-making process when it is very difficult to have
a constructive impact on analysis and decision-making.
My
concerns about these charges do not mean that I believe that they
are factually accurate. Some of it is clearly erroneous, such
as the perceptions of the training and policy orientation of the
OIRA staff, which is actually quite diverse. Yet in this town
it is often said that perception is reality.
During
the last year, my first priority has been to establish a climate
of openness at OIRA that, quite frankly, is not typical of the
Executive Office of the President. My boss Mitch Daniels and I
believe that in a Republican Administration, where charges of
pro-business bias will always be present, it is particularly important
for regulatory review to be an open process. We see openness not
simply as a canon of good government but as a strategy to transform
the public debate about regulation to one of substance (do the
benefits of this rule justify its costs to the consumer?) rather
than process (who met with which lobbyist before the decision
was made?). In pursuit of more openness, we have done the following:
-We
disclose on the web the specifics of our meetings with outside
parties--the date, the topic of the meeting, the names of participants
and their affiliations--and we have invited the affected agency
to be present for these discussions;
-We
have placed on the web our key written communications with agencies,
which place our technical and policy rationales in the public
domain for scrutiny;
-We
update daily on the web which rules are under review, which have
been cleared and which have been returned for further consideration;
-We
have provided electronic access to OIRA speeches, testimony and
press releases; and
-We
have invested in the development of a new electronic rulemaking
information system, to begin late next year, that may render obsolete
much of what we now call our public docket room.
In
taking these steps toward openness, we are under no illusion that
openness breeds consensus. We are aware that the substance of
many of our initiatives are quite controversial, and our openness
has the effect of sharpening that controversy. For those of you
who know me well, you know that I would not be comfortable if
I was not stirring the pot, hopefully in a constructive way. Nor
do we believe that the degree of openness we have established
is adequate. More steps in this direction are in the works.
In
addition to openness, we are committed to greater use of science
in regulatory policy. On this front, the Bush Administration is
dedicated to a smarter regulatory system: one that adopts new
regulations when markets fail to serve the public interest; that
modifies existing rules to make then more effective, less costly
or less intrusive; and one that rescinds rules that are outmoded
or should never have been adopted in the first place.
Our
philosophy is not uniformly pro-regulation or anti-regulation;
it respects regulation as an essential function of government,
but sees OMB review as a form of consumer protection to protect
people from poorly designed rules. We can do better, for example,
than regulate the design of airbag systems for the benefit of
170-pound unbelted adult males while children, the elderly and
the petite experience little or no benefit or even net risk. We
can also reduce air pollution at utilities with a market-based
system of tradable permits--a system that achieves more pollution
control at less cost than our current litigation-prone system.
OMB's
process of centralized oversight is a device to strengthen the
hands of scientists, engineers and economists within the agencies--they
now know that regulatory proposals cannot survive OMB review without
careful supporting analysis. OMB oversight is also a device, as
Stephen Breyer has argued, to combat the tunnel vision that plagues
the thinking of single-mission regulators. In our good-faith efforts
to enhance the safety of tires, for example, we should not miss
opportunities to regulate in ways that will simultaneously enhance
the overall safety of the vehicle.
We
therefore share the view that the complexity of regulatory policy
demands the skill, expertise and experience of a dedicated career
staff. We have recently reversed a 20-year decline in the number
of professional staff at OIRA. Our objective has been to add science
and engineering expertise to a staff that was already strong in
policy analysis, economics, statistics and information technology.
We are hiring, for example, the first toxicologist and the first
epidemiologist at OIRA. This change in staffing mix reflects what
we see as a rise in the importance of science-based regulation
in the last 20 years, particularly in the health, safety and environmental
arena. We are aware that this new expertise needs to be deployed
carefully and with respect for the vast amounts of expertise and
experience at the agencies. Yet we do plan to use this expertise
to ask tougher questions of agencies about their priorities, their
science-review procedures, and their specific rulemaking proposals.
Our
commitment to sound science and economics is reflected in our
aggressive implementation of the new information quality law.
Congress has required that agencies provide the public an opportunity
to seek correction of poor quality information that is being disseminated
by federal agencies. This new system will take effect on October
1 of this year pursuant to OMB guidelines that were adopted through
an extensive process of public comment and revision. Although
some observers fear that this system is aimed only at government-generated
information, a close reading of the OMB guidelines reveals that
we are also seeking an improvement in the quality of third-party
information used by federal agencies.
On
the quality of regulatory analysis, my Office and CEA are at the
outset of a process to refine the guidelines for regulatory analysis
that govern our review of agency rulemaking packages. We have
already invited public comment on which issues merit reconsideration
and we intend to subject our initial proposal to an extensive
process of public comment, peer review and interagency review.
Finally,
we are trying to transform OIRA from an end-of-the-pipeline organization
to one that also engages in early promotion of good policies and
prevention of bad ones. That means a role in priority-setting,
though we believe it is important to play this role in a transparent
manner. We have used a new concept called the prompt letter to
suggest promising regulatory priorities to agencies, some that
can save thousands of lives and protect the environment in a cost-effective
manner. An example is the forthcoming final rule from FDA that
will provide consumers information about the trans-fatty acid
content of foods, an important risk factor in development of heart
disease.
Our
annual Report to Congress has also added a new feature: an opportunity
for the public to nominate regulatory programs that need to be
extended, modified or rescinded. We have recently received over
2000 public comments on our 2002 Report to Congress, and we plan
to publish by late summer our preliminary evaluation of whether
each specific recommendation should be an agency priority. Final
decisions about priorities will remain with the agencies. We believe
this is a much more cost-effect approach to regulatory reform
than the suggestion that agencies should review all of their existing
rules.
In
summary, the Bush Administration is committed to a strong, centralized
approach to regulatory policy. We seek to adopt smarter regulations,
not necessarily more or fewer rules. The approach is becoming
more open, it is becoming more analytical, and it is beginning
to exert influence at earlier stages of the regulatory process.
We certainly have a lot of work to do and thus I am very eager
to have any suggestions that you might provide. Thank you very
much for the opportunity to speak today and I certainly welcome
any questions and comments.
|
|
|