Opportunity Wasted: The Obama Administration's Failure to Adopt Needed Regulatory Safeguards in a Timely Way is Costing Lives and Money
Posted: 26 Mar 2016
Date Written: March 2012
Abstract
In April of 2011, the Center for Progressive Reform issued a white paper that identified 12 key health, safety, and environmental regulatory actions slowly working their way through the Obama Administration’s regulatory pipeline. In the white paper, the authors warned that the Administration’s failure to adopt a sense of urgency with respect to completing its work had opened the door to the very real prospect that nine of the twelve regulatory actions might get caught up in the backwash of the 2012 presidential campaign, and indeed might never be completed by the current Administration. Judging from the Administration’s recently released regulatory agenda, all or part of nine of these actions will not go into effect during this presidential term.
Nearly ten months later, that grim prediction is coming true. For all intents and purposes, the Administration seems to have shut down its regulatory machinery, evidently unwilling to advance significant regulatory initiatives for fear that they could adversely affect the President’s chances of being reelected.
This report returns to the 12 critical regulatory actions identified in the previous white paper, using the Administration’s most recent regulatory agenda as a gauge of how much progress the Administration is likely to achieve in advancing them over the course of 2012.
Keywords: Regulation, Environment, Health, Safety
JEL Classification: D62, D63, H41, K20, K23, K32
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation