With his attractive family and a phalanx of top aides in tow, Professor Cass Sunstein had a cordial, 45-minute hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee yesterday. He was introduced by former student and current Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) who praised Sunstein as a teacher, mentor, and eclectic thinker, all qualities for which he is rightly known. Ironically, however, the remainder of the hearing could be summarized as efforts by the three Senators in attendance--Chairman Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), ranking minority member Susan Collins (R-ME), and Senator Daniel Akaka (D-HI--to get Sunstein to pledge that eclectic thinking will not be his modus operandi at the White House. Full text
Cass Sunstein, President Obama's controversial nominee for Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), will go before the Senate's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee for his confirmation hearing on Tuesday (May 12). The Regulatory Czar, as this position is known, wields enormous influence over the substance of federal regulations affecting matters as diverse as public health and safety, the environment, and education.
Professor Sunstein's nomination has attracted attention from the public interest community, largely focused on the many controversial stances on regulatory policy that he has taken in his legal scholarship. Here are some of the things I will be listening for when I go to the hearing on Tuesday:
Full textInside the Washington Beltway, we are awash in stories about President Obama's first 100 days. Some are comparative -- how is Obama doing in relationship to Franklin Roosevelt at the same point in his first term? Some are pure spin -- "[we're competent and we love each other!]" opines Rahm Emanuel, the obviously biased Obama chief of staff. And some are substantive -- has he kept his campaign promises and, if not, how many more miles does he have to go before he sleeps?
On the issues in our bailiwick, the President gets an "A" for effort, a "B" for execution, and an "incomplete" for the course as a whole.
Full textCenter for Progressive Reform President Rena Steinzor reacts to nomination of Cass Sunstein to be director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Full text
Say you live in an urban neighborhood where crime is worrisome but not overwhelming. The police are chronically understaffed, with no money to walk the beat, and instead depend on what we might call a "deterrence-based enforcement system" - making high-profile arrests, prosecuting the worst violators, and relying on the resulting publicity to frighten others from taking up a life of crime. Now suppose a group of trade associations representing local "businesses," that is to say drug dealers and thieves, marches on the police station demanding a gentler approach. Instead of making arrests, the police form a little club that offers conveniently scheduled workshops on how to comply with the law. And any club member that asserts an intention to try to be a better person - yard-long rap sheet notwithstanding - is invited to an award ceremony, and given a plaque for their wall along with a walk on their next couple of deals on the corner. Sound like one of Tony Soprano's feverish dreams? In fact, this scenario describes, metaphorically, the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) "Performance Track" program, which was recently and deservedly put on hold by newly appointed EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. Full text
Two years ago, a pair of well-meaning economists, Richard Morgenstern and Winston Harrington, who work at the moderate think tank Resources for the Future (RFF) got a large grant from the Smith Richardson Foundation to convene a group of well-credentialed academics to consider how to improve "cost-benefit analysis" (CBA). Unfortunately, their long-awaited report, released today, is a mouse that tries to roar, but doesn't quite. The reforms proposed in the final chapter -- and that are never endorsed by the report's contributing experts -- are your grandma's version of cost-benefit analysis. Rather than presenting bold ideas that might somehow have transformed the cost-benefit methodology into something that, if adopted, would not hamper -- and eventually embarrass -- the Obama Administration, it instead offers up only modest tweaks. Full text
Dangerous consumer products just can't seem to stay out of the news lately. The newest revelations are on drywall imported from China. Time reports the horrifying story of a 67-year-old dance teacher named Danie Beck whose two-story townhouse was lined with Chinese drywall. Beck smelled horrific odors shortly after moving in, and then began experiencing dizzy spells, insomnia, and sore joints. Eventually, she discovered the source of her misery: the drywall had somehow ended up with high levels of sulfur in the gypsum used to make it. The levels were so high that she and her homebuilder believe they corroded the coils on Beck's air conditioning system, short circuited her electric wiring, and discolored her wood furniture. Full text
The financial cataclysm gripping the country is often (and rightly) blamed on a lax system of public and private oversight of financial institutions. On the private side, investors trusted huge auditing companies like Arthur Anderson to rate multinational corporations for fiscal soundness. Meanwhile, Arthur Anderson also took handsome fees from the same corporations to conduct those audits. Such self-dealing makes no sense to most Americans. No one lets us administer our own driving tests, much less check our own tax returns. On the public side of the equation, we must consider the behavior of the government's watchdog, the Securities and Exchange Commission... Full text
CPR President Rena Steinzor lays out the organization's recommendations for creating the new Executive Order on regulatory review: The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) invited public comments on the design of its new Executive Order on regulatory review, and CPR has now submitted our recommendations. We urged the Obama Administration to make fundamental changes in how OMB and prospective "regulatory czar" Cass Sunstein operate. We're hopeful that the new Administration will convert OMB from a regulatory Siberia into the guarantor of dramatically improved government protection of public health, safety, and the environment. Full text
Center for Progressive Reform Member Scholar Rena Steinzor on OSHA: The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is the most maligned and least respected federal agency with responsibility for protecting people's lives. Now that Hilda Solis has been confirmed as Secretary of the Department of Labor, we can only hope that a new OSHA administrator with a strong stomach, an iron will, and a yes we can attitude will be chosen to take over this troubled agency. Workplace injuries and illnesses numbered 4.1 million in private sector workplaces for 2006, or an average of 4.4 per 100 workers, down from 10.9/100 in 1972. Unfortunately, in all likelihood, these figures substantially understate the true incidence of injuries and illnesses. Recent studies by independent economists suggest that actual injuries may be as much as 30 to 69 percent higher than Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates. A total of 5,488 fatal work injuries were recorded in the United States in 2007... (Click on the headline to read the full post.) Full text