The wonky but incredibly important changes Biden just made to regulatory policy
In this episode, Sabeel Rahman, former acting administrator of the federal Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, discusses updates to regulatory policy that reflect a positive new approach to how climate (and other) regulations will be assessed and crafted.
(PDF transcript)
(Active transcript)
Text transcript:
David Roberts
When President Biden first took office, his administration released a series of "Day One executive actions." Among them was reforming the way federal regulations are developed and evaluated. This is not exactly something the public was clamoring for, or even aware of, but it is foundational to the administration's ability to achieve its other goals.
The agency in charge of reviewing proposed federal regulations is called the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, or OIRA, which sits inside the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). It is a fairly obscure corner of the federal bureaucracy that doesn't come in for much public scrutiny, but as the gateway through which all federal regulations must pass, it is immensely powerful in shaping the space of possibilities for any administration.
A few weeks ago, OIRA answered Biden's call by issuing updated versions of two crucial documents: circular A4 and circular A94. The former contains guidance for agencies on how OIRA will evaluate regulations; the latter contains guidance for how it will evaluate public investments.
These guidance documents have not been updated in more than 20 years, so this development is long overdue. The new circulars contain some fairly technical updates to the way OIRA does cost-benefit analysis — and the goals toward which it deploys cost-benefit analysis — but they are incredibly important, evidence of a generational philosophical shift.
To unpack these changes, I talked with Sabeel Rahman of Brooklyn Law School, who served as acting administrator of OIRA last year while its current leader was being confirmed by the Senate. Rahman was intimately involved in designing the updated guidance, so I was eager to talk to him about the new approach, how it was developed, how it reflects Biden's priorities, and what it means for the future of climate and other regulations.
I know this sounds wonky, but it is worth your time. I promise you will come out of it excited about cost-benefit analysis.
With no further ado, Sabeel Rahman, welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.
Sabeel Rahman
Thanks so much for having me.
David Roberts
This is awesome. I'm so excited to talk about this.
Sabeel Rahman
It is wonky, but it is awesome ...
David Roberts
Wonky and awesome. I've had sort of a side obsession with these issues for a long, long time, and this is really a perfect opportunity to jump into them. But before we jump into too many wonky details, I want to do some scene setting just so people know, kind of have a sense of what we're talking about in general. So when Biden came in, he issued this sort of list of "Day One," what they call "Day One priorities." And one of those was to update regulatory policy, basically how regulations get assessed and crafted. This is not something I think the public is beating down the door demanding this.
This is something that
