When it comes to health, safety and the environment – the Center for Progressive Reform’s core issue areas – executive branch enforcement of the law has become yet another arena to fight and re-fight policy battles presumably settled in Congress. In particular, regulated entities – including companies that pollute or that make potentially dangerous products – have become especially savvy at leveraging their relationships with the White House, agency political appointees and other political players in Washington to secure ineffective regulatory policy in the form of regulations that undercut the very laws they are meant to effect, and enforcement approaches that render meaningful regulations all but toothless.

 

The result is regulatory policy that too often fails to enforce the law, and that does far too little to protect health, safety and the environment. Read about CPR Member Scholars’ work to make sure to make sure laws designed to protect health, safety and the environment are enforced.

 

• Regulatory Underkill. One way to make sure that regulatory safeguards for health, safety and the environment don’t interfere with industry profits is to make sure the regulations aren’t very demanding. Read CPR’s Member Scholars writings on the subject of “Regulatory Underkill,” as well as on the White House Office of Management and Budget’s annual Report to Congress on the Costs and Benefits of Federal Regulation.
• Regulatory Sabotage. Read more from CPR’s Member Scholars about specific methods used to undercut enforcement of the nation’s environmental, health and safety statutes.
• Sophisticated Sabotage. In their 2004 book, Sophisticated Sabotage: The Intellectual Games Used to Subvert Responsible Regulation, CPR Member Scholars Thomas McGarity and Sidney A. Shapiro described how dubious risk assessment and economic models have come to dominate regulatory decision-making, and how they are used to stymie urgently needed protective regulations, putting Americans at serious risk from avoidable hazards. Also read "Responsible Regulation Sabotaged," by Sidney A. Shapiro and Thomas O. McGarity, published September 22, 2004 on the Center for American Progress website.
• EPA's Poor Enforcement Record.  CPR Member Scholar Joel Mintz’s 2004 study of the Bush Environmental Protection Agency was a reminder that good laws and strong regulations can be rendered impotent by listless enforcement. Read, ‘Treading Water’: A Preliminary Assessment of EPA Enforcement, from the October 2004 Environmental Law Review, posted by permission.  
• Administration challenges to state environmental regulation.   On a range of fronts, the Bush Administration has worked to weaken federal environmental standards, letting a variety of industries off the hook for cleaning up pollution they have caused. And at the price of sacrificing principles of federalism, the Administration sided with industry in efforts to undercut California environmental regulations, which are often tougher than federal standards.  Read an August 18, 2003 op-ed on the subject in the San Francisco Chronicle by CPR Member Scholar Cliff Rechtschaffen.
• A CPR Perspective. CPR Member Scholars have authored articles on related topics, as part of the CPR Perspectives Series.  These include Perspectives on Cost-benefit Analysis, Data Quality, Devolution, Estimating Regulatory Costs, The Feasibility Principle, Federal Advisory Committee Act, OMB Annual Report and Hit List, Precautionary Principle, and Statutory Design.