Obfuscation at the EPA

Abstract

Over the last year, the Obama administration has quietly altered the calculus used in federal cost-benefit analysis. Analyses now treat the hiring of workers by a business or government as a benefit to the economy because of the job created, and not as an additional cost of doing business. Such an approach stands the entire concept of cost-benefit analysis on its head. It threatens to remove the ability of the Office of Management and Budget - which is tasked with playing traffic cop for regulations - to apply any sort of rigorous analysis to the raft of regulations promulgated by the various executive branch agencies every year.