Last month, the voters said their government is not working properly and must be reformed. One of the best government reform efforts would be to modernize our regulatory system.
When the business community complains about regulations, many people believe that it’s just trying to cut corners. But businesses do recognize the need for regulations to ensure workplace safety and protect public health. What they don’t like is a regulatory system that is increasingly opaque and driven by political agendas, lacks basic accountability, often employs flawed data and questionable science, ignores congressional intent, and too often prevents citizens from effectively weighing in on proposed rules.
With a $2 trillion price tag in compliance costs, an increasing number of huge and complex rules, and a permitting process that makes it virtually impossible to build anything, Americans deserve to know whether they are getting their money’s worth and what impact rules have on jobs, small businesses, and our economic and personal freedoms.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce advocates for regulatory reform that adheres to four commonsense, bipartisan principles.
The first is accountability. Congress needs to exercise rigorous oversight of the federal agencies. This includes insisting on an up-or-down vote on the largest and most costly regulations and more carefully crafting legislation so that congressional intent is perfectly clear and regulators’ discretion in writing rules is limited.
The second principle is transparency. Nothing would ensure greater transparency than eliminating sue and settle agreements, where advocacy groups sue the Environmental Protection Agency or another federal agency. With little to no pushback, the agency agrees to a settlement and a court signs off. As a result, the key decisions about how and when to issue new regulations are made in secret, entirely outside of the normal rule-making process.
The third principle is to allow meaningful participation by stakeholders and citizens. Agencies should be required to inform the public of pending regulatory decisions on high-impact rules early in the process, share their data and economic models, and allow adequate time for comments.
The fourth principle is simple: When it comes to the permitting process, let’s be safe but swift. Today, major energy, infrastructure and other projects cannot be built or even granted a permit because of a broken environmental review process. With commonsense reforms, we don’t need to choose between speed and safety. We can have both, and we need both.
It’s time to restore accountability, transparency, public participation, and efficiency to our regulatory system and our government. This will remain a top priority for the Chamber of Commerce in 2015.
— Tom Donohue is president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The opinions expressed are his own.