Today, the U.S. is suffering from a regulatory paradox: Too few and too many regulations at the same time. On the one hand, financial services were clearly under-regulated during the 2000s, making financial reform essential. Similarly, President Obama’s healthcare reform bill was a key first step to reining in medical costs.
But in other areas we see an accumulation of rules and regulations over the past decade. The trend started with the vast expansion of homeland security regulation under the Bush administration and continued through the first two years of the Obama administration.
That’s why President Obama should be applauded for issuing his executive order “Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review” on January 18. The order asked agencies to pay more attention to promoting innovation as part of the regulatory process. In addition, agencies were directed to come up with a plan for reviewing their existing significant regulations.
However, the president’s executive order did not go far enough. A regulatory ‘self-review’ process has been tried repeatedly in the past, and it’s always fallen far short of expectations. Regulators have a tough time trimming their own regulations, given internal bureaucratic pressures. But don’t blame the agencies—neither Congress nor the executive branch has a good way of reviewing and reforming existing regulations, even when they have become outdated or burdensome.
The regulatory system needs a mechanism to address this need for periodic review. We propose a Regulatory Improvement Commission (RIC), an independent body analogous to the BRAC Commissions for evaluating military base closures. This is designed to build on the president’s executive order, and in the process improve its effectiveness. The RIC will take a principled approach to evaluating and pruning existing regulations, gather input from all stakeholders (not just business or just agencies), and do so in a manner that ensures we protect public health, safety, and the environment.
[...] here’s a new paper I wrote for PPI entitled Reviving Jobs and Innovation: A Progressive Approach to Improving Regulation. An excerpt: Today, the U.S. is suffering from a regulatory paradox: Too few and too many regulations [...]
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This seems to be an interesting perspective to form an independent group. How will this team be chosen? Will they be able to look at economic costs as well as environmental as well as public health and safety for the surrounding communities and states? How long will there term be and how to build a fresh team every four years that have no personal investmesnt or stakes in any of the regulation decsions?
There needs to be a new approach and this could be an excellent solution if the correct design and process would be put into place. This could be a huge undertaking and could take some time to implement. Have all of the designs and plans been outlined and what is the palnned start date if the process is ready to roll? Do we have the support of key descion makers in Washington? Change needs to happen to protect those interests that have been neglected of the average american at the expense of a few. This american would be interested in learning more about this method for an improved system when it comes to regulation that makes sense and can help america achieve the best possible optimum solution that improves our nation for the better.
[...] my paper on the Regulatory Improvement Commission, I argued that adding new regulations was like tossing small pebbles into a stream. Each pebble by [...]