Regulatory Underkill

Undercutting Health, Safety and Environmental Protections

The Bush Administration has been particularly adept at devising methods to weaken standards and enforcement, the plain language of various protective statutes notwithstanding. CPR’s Member Scholars work to expose and defeat such efforts. 

In 2005, CPR Member Scholars William W. Buzbee, Robert L. Glicksman and Sidney A. Shapiro collaborated on "Regulatory Underkill: The Bush Administration's Insidious Dismantling of Public Health and Environmental Protections" (CPR White Paper #503). They argue persuasively that the Bush Administration and its allies in Congress and elsewhere subverted the regulatory process by applying a variety of methods, including appropriations riders aimed at weakening enforcement environmental, health and safety standards; suppressing information that would generate demand for stronger enforcement; reducing public scrutiny of the process; denying needed funding to regulatory and enforcement entities; and more.

CPR’s Member Scholars have regularly replied to the White House Office of Management and Budget’s annual reports to Congress on the Costs and Benefits of Federal Regulations. Not surprisingly, the Scholars often find that the Administration is placing too little value on the safeguards that sound and reasonable regulations provide.

• Editorial Memo.  Read "Regulation Makes a Comeback," an October 1, 2008 editorial memorandum by CPR Member Scholar Rena Steinzor on what the autumn 2008 Wall Street crisis tells us about the dangers of deregulation of environmental health and safety.
• Op-Ed.  Read "Reviving Regulation," by CPR Member Scholar Rena Steinzor, published in the September 28, 2008 Baltimore Sun.
• Underkill White Paper.  CPR Member Scholars William W. Buzbee, Robert L. Glicksman and Sidney A. Shapiro collaborated on "Regulatory Underkill: The Bush Administration's Insidious Dismantling of Public Health and Environmental Protections" (CPR White Paper #503).
  
• Comments and Testimony on OMB's Annual Reports to Congress on the Costs and Benefits of Regulation:
  • 2008 Comments, by Amy Sinden and James Goodwin.
  • 2007 Comments, by Amy Sinden and Sidney Shapiro.
  • 2006 Comments, by  Amy Sinden.
  • 2005 Comments, by Thomas McGarity and Amy Sinden.
  • 2004 Comments, by  Frank Ackerman and Lisa Heinzerling.  Testimony by Robert Verchick on the 2004 Draft Report to Congress.
  • 2003 Comments, by Lisa Heinzerling.  Her Testimony on the 2003 Draft Report to Congress.
  • 2002 Comments, by Thomas McGarity.
• CPR Perspectives.  Read Amy Sinden's CPR Perspective on OMB Annual Report & 'Hit List' and William Buzbee's Strategies of Regulatory Underkill.