The Obama administration has passed too many regulations too fast and has no intention of slowing, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, said during a hearing Wednesday. “President Obama has rushed through many costly and burdensome regulations over the last seven years,” Smith said, adding that the president “shows no signs of slowing down and no doubt will continue to pursue its partisan and extreme agenda regardless of the price to the American people.”
The administration may attempt to pass several “midnight regulations,” or rules published between the fall election and January inauguration of a new administration, the Republicans warned. While November to January is referred to as the “midnight” period during any election cycle, it is particularly important during a presidential election year.
In such a year, the outgoing administration may publish regulations during this time, rush them through finalization, and enact them just before the new administration takes power. The regulations can be reversed by the incoming administration, but this requires an extensive rule-making process.
The threat of midnight regulations is daunting for several reasons, including ongoing regulatory overreach and a lack of adequate analysis, committee Republicans asserted. “The speed at which these regulations are being finalized provides little certainty that these rules are based on a sound and transparent review of the underlying scientific data and analysis,” Smith said, noting specifically regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency including the agency’s carbon standards for coal-fired plants and efficiency standards set by the Department of Energy for numerous appliances.
Witness Sam Batkins, director of regulatory policy with the American Action Forum, explained why pushing regulations through at the end of an administration is risky. All regulations are required to undergo review by the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). Setting a hard deadline for the enactment of regulations could rush this process, Batkins said. “Quick OIRA review times generally lead to poor economic analysis and poor economic analysis can often lead to poor results as well. When we’re talking about multibillion, multimillion-dollar rules, the nation can’t afford poor analysis,” Batkins said.
Committee members further expressed concern that in relying on midnight regulations the administration is bypassing Congress in the lawmaking process. Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.) said that in these circumstances “you lose transparency, you lose accountability. … It’s a constitutional aspect, and if we’re going to have constitutional government we’ve got to get back to Congress making law rather than the executive branch bypassing Congress making law through agencies.”
Democrats expressed annoyance at the topic of the hearing, saying the GOP majority’s ongoing attack on the federal environmental and energy departments is only holding back progress. “I look forward to the day when this Congress and this committee will step back from this counterproductive opposition to efforts by EPA and DOE and other federal agencies who are just trying to carry out their statutorily mandated missions,” Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) said. “They may not always get everything exactly right, nor do we, but trying to prevent them from doing their job at all is not a good use of our time. Instead of seeking to score political points by undermining the important work we should come together in a productive way.”
