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House Balks at Bush Order for New Powers
"This can only further delay implementing health, safety and environmental protections," said Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, a private watchdog group that joined numerous labor and good-government groups, including the AFL-CIO, Public Citizen and the Union of Concerned Scientists, in opposing Bush's order.
Miller tried unsuccessfully at a hearing in April to persuade the White House regulatory affairs office's former acting administrator, Steven Aitken, to reveal what private groups might have been involved in rewriting the Clinton-era order.
  President Bush walks out to speak to reporters following his visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, Tuesday, July 3, 2007. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) (Pablo Martinez Monsivais - AP) 
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Aitken stressed that the Clinton order also used market failure as a criteria in advancing new rules and directing agencies to appoint regulatory policy officers, many of whom were political appointees. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., backed Aitken up at the hearing.
"The pattern is that we are challenging the president's authority, hoping to find a mistake and then making a lot of political hay about it," Rohrabacher said.
The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service noted in an analysis last February that President Reagan made the White House regulatory affairs office the central clearinghouse for substantive rulemaking, reviewing 2,000 to 3,000 proposed regulations per year. With Clinton's 1993 order, White House reviews of proposed regulations dropped to between 500 and 700 a year, the researchers said.
Bill Kovacs, vice president for regulatory affairs with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the White House's regulatory affairs office now has about 35 people to keep track of the 4,000 rules federal agencies issue every year.
"It's only reasonable that you have some way of monitoring what your agencies are doing," Kovacs said, adding that the White House needs to assert control over the process.
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The House bill is HR 2829.
On the Net:
Text of Jan. 18 Executive Order 13422: http: http:/
