John Judis has a new article up at TNR that captures the quiet revolution in rulemaking by the Obama Administration. Money quote:
Yet there is one extremely consequential area where Obama has done just about everything a liberal could ask for--but done it so quietly that almost no one, including most liberals, has noticed. Obama’s three Republican predecessors were all committed to weakening or even destroying the country’s regulatory apparatus: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the other agencies that are supposed to protect workers and consumers by regulating business practices. Now Obama is seeking to rebuild these battered institutions. In doing so, he isn’t simply improving the effectiveness of various government offices or making scattered progress on a few issues; he is resuscitating an entire philosophy of government with roots in the Progressive era of the early twentieth century. Taken as a whole, Obama’s revival of these agencies is arguably the most significant accomplishment of his first year in office.
To this I say amen. Regulation is an often overlooked element of policymaking. But thousands of regulations are passed each year by agencies of the executive branch, and hundreds of them have significant impacts on the American public. Lives are saved or lost and vast transfers of welfare take place. Yet regulations, rarely hit the front pages of newspapers.
Regulation is also the area of policymaking (other than foreign policy) most under presidential control. Presidents from Carter to Obama have realized this and have used regulations to achieve goals that they could not achieve in Congress. If there is no climate-change legislation, you can be sure that Obama's EPA will issue regulations on greenhouse gas emissions.
The Obama changes are real and significant. And they will only multiply in the year ahead. It is nearly impossible to issue a final regulation (except in cases of emergencies) in a year. Many of the changes put in place now by Obama and his appointees will bear fruit in 2011 and 2012 (and hopefully 2013-2016!).
There are a few minor inaccuracies in the article. Obama's OIRA meets with industry because they meet with whoever asks for a meeting and industry asks for far more meetings than public interest groups. Also the discount rate urged by OIRA under the Bush Administration was 3% and 7%, not simply 7% (happy to explain the relevance of this if anyone asks).
The inaccuracies should not obscure the central point made by Judis. When evaluating the record of Obama (or any president for that matter), the regulatory record must play a significnant role. And so far, he gets very good grades in this area.