Our Position
More than 1/3
The Government Accountability Office found that about 35% of major regulations are issued without a public comment period.
SOURCE: GAO
The Chamber is building support for commonsense regulatory reform based on four bipartisan principles.
- Accountability. Congress should insist on an up-or-down vote on the largest and most costly regulations and more carefully craft legislation so that the purpose of the new rules are perfectly clear and regulators’ discretion in writing rules is limited.
- Transparency. Nothing would ensure greater transparency than eliminating sue and settle agreements, where key decisions about how and when to issue new regulations are made in secret under pressure from special interest groups, entirely outside of the normal rulemaking process.
- Participation. 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 those who will be affected adequate time for comments.
- Safe But Swift. Today, major energy, infrastructure, and necessary community improvement 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.
With these four simple principles in mind, the Chamber is advancing three bipartisan bills to reform and modernize the regulatory system:
Costly Rules
Total compliance costs for federal regulations are $2 trillion annually.
- Permit streamlining legislation, which would create a more coordinated and efficient permitting process for federal regulatory reviews, environmental decision making, and permitting—without changing existing standards or environmental safeguards.
- The Regulatory Accountability Act, which would reform the regulatory process by increasing transparency during rule development, allowing interested parties access to the data, and making agencies consider alternatives that achieve their objective at a lower cost.
- The Sunshine Act, which would bring transparency and accountability to the sue and settle process, by allowing federal agencies to bring secret lawsuits filed by special interest groups out from behind closed doors.
Reforming our government’s regulatory system and permitting process are issues that should unite Americans and their competing interests, not divide them.
