Okay, maybe not the best metaphor, since it’s been raining all day in Washington. Nonetheless: In the next five days, the Obama administration is probably going to release a more detailed 2010 budget proposal, its cybersecurity review, and the details of the bank “stress tests.” Busy week. The details of the stress tests have been slowly leaking out — Citigroup and Bank of America both need more capital — and it’s an open secret that the cybersecurity review will call for a big White House role in cybersecurity. But it will be interesting to dig into the specifics. And, of…
Browsing: Regulation
We’ve been reporting for months on the Bush administration’s “midnight regulations,” the flurry of often controversial last-minute rules approved in November and December. The president already announced plans to undo the “conscience rule,” one of most controversial regulations. And today another rule met its end: Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that he’s seeking the end of the “mountaintop mining” rule that allowed coal companies to dump the “fill” — the leftover rocks from mining — in streams. “We’re cleaning up a major misstep from the previous administration,” Salazar said today at a press conference. “This was bad public policy… it…
The Government Accountability Office has a new report out on the Food and Drug Administration: Apparently the agency doesn’t have enough information about the ingredients in dietary supplements to decide if they’re safe. ..a lack of information is one of the most significant factors that limit the FDA’s ability to identify and properly act on safety concerns regarding dietary supplements and foods with added dietary ingredients. I think there’s an important point to draw from this report. We talk a lot about the FDA’s budget and staffing woes. And the agency is certainly underfunded — you can’t expect the FDA…
President Obama put a freeze on new regulation yesterday — nothing will be approved until his Cabinet secretaries have a chance to review it. The announcement came after months of frantic “midnight regulation” by federal agencies. And it’s obviously intended to block new rules left unfinished by the Bush administration. But will it affect some of the most controversial Bush-era regulations? I’ve been digging through old copies of the Federal Register — a fun way to spend the afternoon, I assure you — and the answer is a resounding “no.” Some of the most controversial rules are already in effect.…
Rahm Emanuel issued a memo this afternoon freezing all government regulation, according to a press release from the White House. The memo tells agency heads not to submit any new regulations (proposed or final) until they can be reviewed by a Cabinet official appointed by President Obama. It also orders agencies to withdraw any regulations not yet published in the Federal Register. And it advises them to delay implementing any final regulations that have not yet taken effect — an effort to delay the dozens of Bush-era “midnight regulations.” This is not unprecedented: Former White House chief of staff Andrew…
There are 8,600 facilities with at least one set of the official portraits of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, and at noon eastern tomorrow the portraits will have to be “removed and respectfully disposed†of, according to a GSA spokeswoman. The spokeswoman didn’t expand on what “respectfully dispose†means, so your guess is as good as ours. The portraits will be replaced by the official photos of President Obama and Vice President Biden as soon as prints become available, which probably means most offices won’t see these smiling faces until March, according to GSA.
One of President-elect Barack Obama’s most interesting nominations is Cass Sunstein, his pick to head OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Cass Sunstein, a Harvard University law professor and Barack Obama’s pick to head OIRA. We’ll profile him in next Monday’s Federal Times — like I did this week with Nancy Killefer, Obama’s new chief performance officer — but a few early thoughts: Sunstein is a law professor at Harvard University; before that, he taught at the University of Chicago. He’s an old friend of the president-elect from his UChicago teaching days. And he’s written extensively on government regulation,…
Update: Full story here. Starting Jan. 15, new contracts awarded by agencies were supposed to mandate that vendors verify the immigration status of their workers using the Homeland Security Department’s E-Verify system. But Federal Times has learned that the department has decided to postpone the implementation of that requirement until at least Feb. 20 due to a lawsuit filed by five industry groups. Lawrence Lorber, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the case, which includes the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, tells us that the government was responding to the plaintiffs request for a stay in the rule’s implementation. More to…
We’ve been reporting for months on the flurry of midnight rulemaking at executive agencies. Here’s the latest addition to the list: Health and Human Services today issued a final version of the “conscience rule.” It allows workers at health care facilities — doctors, nurses, pharmacists — to refuse to help provide services they find morally objectionable. Even a janitor could, conceivably, refuse to clean a room where abortions take place. “Many health care providers routinely face pressure to change their medical practice — often in direct opposition to their personal convictions,†said Joxel Garcia, the department’s assistant secretary of health.…
Exactly 75 years ago today, the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, which lifted the national prohibition on the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol for consumption, was ratified.