by Jason Cohen
President Joe Biden’s administration finalized guidance Thursday likely to burden Americans with costlier regulations to fulfill administration priorities such as combating climate change.
Biden’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is enacting new guidance that would require regulators to consider priorities like inequality and climate change when analyzing the costs and benefits of regulation. The White House argued the guidance is necessary so that regulations are issued with up-to-date analysis and information.
Critics, however, argue the new guidance would lead to costlier regulations in the name of the Biden administration’s agenda.
“Adjusting how cost-benefit analysis is conducted in a way to make it easier to issue heavy-handed and costly regulations is unwise at anytime, particularly when Americans continue to suffer under punishingly high inflation,” Republican Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford stated, according to The New York Times.
The new regulations will in practice allow for stronger climate regulations by factoring in the projected economic costs of climate change and global warming, according to the NYT.
The regulations are based on Biden’s January 2021 called, “Memorandum on Modernizing Regulatory Review,” which accounts for contributions to progressive policies when considering proposed rules.
“We write to express our opposition to the proposed revisions, which are seemingly designed to fast-track progressive policies that do not have a majority of votes in Congress necessary for passage into law,” Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and a coalition of Senate Republican committee ranking members wrote in a letter pushing back on the memorandum.”
The rules are also based on an April “Executive Order on Modernizing Regulatory Review,” according to the White House fact sheet on the final guidance, which the OMB pointed the Daily Caller News Foundation toward.
The order references regulatory moves that likely would lead to “adversely affect[ing] in a material way the economy, a sector of the economy, productivity, competition, jobs, the environment, public health or safety, or State, local, territorial, or tribal governments or communities” and takes “equity” into account.
Americans may also bear the regulatory cost for other nations because “effects occurring beyond the borders of the United States can result in benefits and costs that accrue to U.S. citizens and residents,” according to the fact sheet.
The OMB’s White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) finalized the regulations.
“This updated guidance will help agencies more accurately estimate the impacts of their regulations and thereby enable them to craft better regulations which, in turn, means lower costs for consumers; cleaner food, air, and water; less fraud and exploitation; increased workplace safety; more innovation; and a stronger economy,” the White House OIRA fact sheet asserts.
The White House did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
– – –
Jason Cohen is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “President Joe Biden” by President Joe Biden.
