There are many public interest organizations keeping their eye on regulatory policies in specific issue areas such as the environment, consumer safety, public health, and so on. OMB Watch’s Regulatory Policy Program keeps its eye on something just as important, but more likely to go under the radar: the regulatory process itself.

       After the wave of important regulatory protections in the 1960s and 70s, corporate special interests began a steady attack on not just specific regulatory decisions but also the regulatory process itself. By changing the rules of the game, industry can change the range of possible outcomes of specific regulatory decisions, or so burden the agencies that it takes years for any new safeguards to be developed. The kinds of issues we follow include

• cost-benefit analysis and other biased, burdensome analytical requirements for regulators;

• risk assessment and uncertainty;

• the integrity of science in public policy;

• the centralization of political control over regulatory policy in the White House;

• federalism;

• burdens on the collection and dissemination of information that is important for regulators, such as scientific assessments; and

• government management reforms, such as performance appraisal and reorganization authority.

       Our focus on these cross-cutting regulatory policy and government management issues gives the Regulatory Policy Program a unique role in the public interest community. Because the regulatory process and related government management issues have such importance to specific public interest issues, however, we often find ourselves in an expert leadership role for the community. We work closely with other public interest organizations in a variety of coalitions and working groups, in order to leverage their combined efforts into effective campaigns to protect and improve federal capacity to safeguard the public.

Why It Matters

1. Government in America is not independent of the people but is, instead, the embodiment of the will of the people. We use government institutions to pool our collective resources into forces strong enough to act against the larger forces that isolated individuals cannot surmount. FDR explained it best in a July 1933 fireside chat: “It goes back to the basic idea of society and of the nation itself that people acting in a group can accomplish things which no individual acting alone could even hope to bring about.” The federal government is a powerful way for the people to “act[] in a group” on a national basis to meet national needs.

2. The unparalleled aggregation of resources that we have in our federal government entails a responsibility to use those resources to identify our unmet needs and to continue to act so that long-resolved problems do not erupt into new crises.

3. Accountability means helping the people maintain control over their own government. Accountability should not, however, be the excuse for policies that divert government resources away from the important work of addressing the public’s unmet needs. Given the risk that policies instituted in the name of accountability could come with costs that keep government from being responsive, it is important for any major accountability initiatives to build in reflexivity: checks that count the costs of accountability reforms, assess the performance of performance measurement rubrics, and make sure that reforms are not obstacles in the way of responsive government.

4. A national government has an obligation to serve the needs of the nation’s populace, at all social and economic strata. National standards safeguard against the race to the bottom, as state and local governments slash their own protective standards in order to lure business investment, and help ensure that citizens of less affluent regions are afforded the same minimal level of protection that those in wealthier areas enjoy.