Keep your eye on Cass Sunstein
Rena Steinzor at the Center for Progressive Reform explains why:
Thursday’s big news on the regulatory front was that President-elect Obama plans to nominate Harvard Professor Cass Sunstein to be the head of the White House Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) – the so-called “regulatory czar” of the federal government. The appointment means that those of us expecting a revival of the protector agencies—EPA, FDA, OSHA, CPSC, and NHTSA—have reason to worry that “yes, we can” will become “no, we won’t.”
The reason for the pre-Russian Revolution appellation is that over the past quarter century, OIRA has become a choke point for federal regulation. Since Ronald Reagan, regulations with any significant impact have had to pass through OIRA’s doors, and while there, many a protective regulation has come to grief. During the Bush years, now a mere 11 days away from ending, OIRA ably accomplished the objective that the Administration plainly had in mind for it: watering down protective regulations or drowning them altogether. In fact, many wise observers came to think of OIRA as the true architect of the Administration’s policy on public health protections, drug safety, workplace safety, consumer product safety, and the preservation of natural resources, not to mention climate change.
How will Cass Sunstein fit into the storyline? Unfortunately, Sunstein’s views on cost-benefit analysis – the principal tool used to dismantle and derail regulation – are not much different from those reflected in the record compiled by John Graham, who served for six years as George W. Bush’s regulatory czar. Sunstein embraces cost-benefit analysis enthusiastically.
Defenders of cost-benefit analysis argue that we should reduce the societal costs and benefits of regulation to absolute dollar figures, no matter how ephemeral the numbers’ relationship to reality may be. Indeed, when it comes right down to it, they’re willing to tolerate the failure of cost-benefit analysts to come up with dollar figures for a good many benefits, effectively zeroing out or drastically understating some benefits of protective regulations.
Moreover, cost-benefit analysis focuses solely on…
Continue reading. Additional pertinent information here. Cass Sunstein looks to be a bad pick, so he should be watched closely.
