This morning I have an article on National Review Online detailing some of the outlandisha and erroneous attacks made against Susan Dudley, President Bush's nominee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within the White House Office of Management and Budget. Like her predecessor, John Graham, Dudley is being caricatured and subjected to false charges in an effort to paint her as an extremist unworthy of confirmation. As I note, some of the attacks are plainly false, and yet have been repeated uncritically throughout the blogosphere. I should also note that I know Susan well, and consider her a friend.
The serious and substantive arguments made against Susan are not so much about her nomination, as they are about the Bush Administration's approach to regulatory policy. The White House picked Susan Dudley because it believes she will carry forward the adminsitration's approach to regulatory review, and continue the policies of her predecessor. This means careful analytic review of agency regulatory proposals in an effort to prevent unnecessary reuglatory overreach. It also means a sincere effort to ensure that regulatory and other administrative measures are cost-effective, and maximize the potential pulbic benefits of regulatory interventions. Many object to this "conservative" appraoch to regulation, but it is the approach this administration will adopt whether or not Susan is ever confirmed.
Adminsitrator of OIRA is clearly an important White House perch. OIRA reviews reuglatory proposals emanating from throughout the executive branch, and can force agencies to redraft regulatory proposals where they are inconsistent with prevailing executive orders and OIRA requirements. This is a big deal, but the role of OIRA should not be overstated. OIRA does not have the authority to trump statutes. So, where a statutory requirement conflicts with OIRA policy, the statutory requirment will preveail — even if that will result in the issuance of a regulation that the administration would otherwise oppose. The OIRA Administrator may be a "Regulatory Czar" (or in this case "Regulatory Czarina,"), but is far from all powerful.
In my view, Susan merits confirmation because she is clearly qualified for the position. She is a thoughtful economic analyst with a wide range of relevant experience — in federal regulatory agencies, in the private sector, in non-profits, and even at OIRA. As head of the regulatory studies program at the Mercatus Center, she has been quite influential in the development of regulatory proposals, submitting regular comments to OIRA. This influence is not lost on her critics, but it is also why the Washington Post said Dudley was John Graham's natural successor at OIRA. I also believe, as I have said before, that a President should receive significant deference in his selection of White House personnnel, so the burden on those opposing Susan's confirmation should be quite high. We shall see whether the Senate adopts this approach.
UPDATE: The Federal Times has more on the Dudley nomination:
Dudley’s name is already well known to agency regulators. The Mercatus Center analyzes regulations while they are being written, suggesting changes that will minimize the cost to individuals and businesses complying with a regulation.One EPA regulator said that when he and his colleagues know that Mercatus is looking at a regulation, they pay special attention to the costs of compliance.
“To some extent it’s something we should do already, but it does make writing the regulation more difficult,” said the regulator, who asked to remain anonymous. Because of Dudley’s analysis of regulations’ impact on the public, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., promised the nomination would receive his “most stringent scrutiny.” He said Dudley’s questioning of the economic justification of regulations might conflict with OIRA’s role reviewing regulations.
OIRA’s “protective role, especially when applied to the environment or the health and safety of consumers and workers, is worthy of a vigorous defense,” Lieberman said. Nobel prize-winning economist Vernon Smith wrote a letter to Lieberman and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, praising Dudley’s qualifications.
“She approaches public policy questions in a principled and objective manner, with no goal other than to understand and pursue the public interest,” he wrote in the July 31 letter. Regulatory advocates said Dudley’s prolific writing should give them ammunition to fight her nomination. But economist Bruce Yandle said senators considering her nomination should keep in mind the inherent controversy that comes with the job.
“The person heading OIRA sits in a hot seat, generally disappointing special interest groups on all sides of a regulatory debate,” he said.
Related Posts (on one page):
- What Does Dudley Drive?
- Desperately Smearing Susan:
- Congratulations to Susan Dudley:
How rich is that.
a) Many seem to have a particular vitriol to critical analysis of their proposals and programs - no matter how objective the analysis is.
b) When given the choice between a inflexible, costly, and/or draconian regulation and a flexible, cheaper, and/or minimally invasive alternative, many regulatory advocates have a strong bias for the former.
I realize that this might seem like a caricature. Unfortunately, I have seen this firsthand.
A friend of mine was in an environmental college course that was about half civil/environmental engineers and half from the UMich School of Natural Resources and Environment.
The instructor asked the class to vote between two regulatory choices:
Choice A would clean up over 90% of the pollution from a river and cost a billion dollars.
Choice B would clean up the river to being cleaner than it was originally and cost ten billion dollars.
The engineers voted for A; the enviro-firsters for B.
Choice A would clean up over 90% of the pollution from a river and cost a billion dollars.
Choice B would clean up the river to being cleaner than it was originally and cost ten billion dollars.
Did the instructor raise the issue of the benefits of the two choices? If not, I'd say it was a stupid question, and neither answer was sensible.
Chevron deference? What about OIRA's ability to block desperately needed rule-making from both the Corps (waters of the US) and the USFWS (critical habitat)?
having reviewed your NRO article, I see the shorter version being something like: Liberal environmental organizations use handle of a new nomination to attack Bush administration environmental policies.
in other news, water wet / heat hot.
Particularly the fire-retardant pajamas example, since I'd seen it earlier at Marshall's and deLong's sites.
NRO article--"[Bloggers] accused Dudley of opposing fire-retardant kids’ pajamas. Yet the article Marshall cited says nothing of the kind. It cites federal regulations concerning children’s pajamas, along with federally mandated low-flow toilets, as examples of how federal regulations impose costs and limit choices for consumers from 'the moment we wake up in the morning' until the time we go to bed."
Commend you for defending a friend under fire. But you've overdone it. Dudley did refer explicitly "unnecessary" regulations, in a context that reasonably applies to the pajamas:
Dudley article--Unnecessary regulatory burdens increase the cost of hiring U.S. workers, reducing American competitiveness, hindering job growth, and sending jobs overseas. [Para] We also pay the price as consumers. From the moment we wake up in the morning -- flushing the toilet twice, courtesy of the Department of Energy's appliance standards -- to the time we put our children in their Consumer Product Safety Commission-approved pajamas, regulations not only increase the cost of goods and services we buy, but also the choices we can make.
It was a stupid, over-wrought piece of prose; but she did write it. Blaming the opposition for sticking her with it seems a bit much.
Thanks for the comment, but I think you (and Marshall and DeLong) are reading too much into her article, and connecting dots that Dudley never connects in order to make her stated positions seem more extreme.
In the article, she was writing about the aggregate cost of all government regulations -- including those that are beneficial -- an aggregate cost that is not measured particularly well and that imposes a "hidden tax" on all Americans.Her only mention of "unnecessary regulations" in the entire article is in a paragraph discussing how regulatory burdens hinder job growth, impose a disproportionate burden on many smaller firms, and reduce American competitiveness. There's no mention of kids here.
It is another paragraph when she turns to the consumer cost of this "hidden tax" -- again, given the article's theme, the tax imposed by all regulations -- where she mentions pajamas. She does not attack these regualtions, but is simnply using them as an example of how "regulations not only increase the cost of goods and services we buy, but also the choices we can make" throughout one's day. Unlike in the prior paragraph, she says nothing to suggest such regulations are "unnecessary" or unwise. Then she closes on her overall theme of the need to consider the aggregate costs of regulations.
Susan Dudley has certainly taken some controversial positions, and opposed various regulatory proposals. But I do not think a fair reading of this article on aggregate regulatory costs can be fairly read as her opposing flame-retardant pajamas for children.
JHA
Not to mention the low flush toilet regluation did have some hard times (most chronicled by Dave Barry), but the market adjusted and today's toilets work great and use less water. There is a really good wired magazine article on how far low flush toilet tech has come as a direct result of putting pressure on companies to make it work
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/toilet.html if you are interested in reading it
Alot of the complaints reminds me of the story of the refridgerator
"Some local jurisdictions passed ordinances requiring owners of old refrigerators to remove the doors or latches before discarding them, but eventually federal legislators decided the time had come for a national solution. Manufacturers balked, saying the technology wasn't available, it'd cost too much, blah blah blah. Congress finally said screw it, you guys figure something out, and in 1956 passed the Refrigerator Safety Act, which required that the doors on all fridges sold after October 30, 1958, be capable of being opened with a 15-pound push from inside. Miraculously, a practical, inexpensive technology immediately appeared--a magnetic door seal. Truth was, the new seal had been developed some time earlier by General Electric, which offered to license the system to other manufacturers, but industry experts caviled that it still needed work. Faced with a deadline, however, pretty much everybody adopted magnetic seals, which in the event worked just fine, and we still use them today."
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/050304.html
How dare the government... do something to fix a problem
But the "installed base" of unflushable low-flow toilets is still out there.
Come on! This is much like Tomlinson appointment to head PBS/NPR. You pick someone who disagrees with what the core purpose of the agency is about.
Huh? Dudley has been nomianted to oversee an agency that is required to analyze, critique and conduct cost-benefit analyses of proposed regulations in order to ensure taht they are necessary and worthwhile. This has been one of OIRA's central functions for the last 25 years. How is she "someone who disagrees with what the core of the agency is about"? Quite the opposite. Indeed, even if all of the caricatured attacks on her were accurate (and they are not) she would still seem to be someone who is in sync with the "core" of OIRA's purpose.
JHA
Whatever. I had an epic 20-flush-and-plunger battle with one toilet recently. That never happened in the old days of toilets that worked well and routinely.
" In 2001, the new Bush White House sought suggestions for government regulations to kill or modify. A small think tank called the Mercatus Center named 44 it didn't like — among them, rules governing energy-efficient air conditioners and renovations to electric-utility plants.
Ultimately, 14 of the 23 rules the White House chose for its "hit list" to eliminate or modify were Mercatus entries — a record that flabbergasted Washington lobbying heavyweights. A year later, the National Association of Manufacturers failed to persuade the administration to embrace even one item on its regulatory wish list."
"Mercatus's rise owes much to the oil-and-gas company Koch Industries Inc., (pronounced "coke"), a privately owned company in Wichita, Kan., that contributes heavily to Republican causes and candidates. A Koch family foundation has given Mercatus and George Mason University a total of $14.4 million since 1998, according to public documents analyzed by the Public Education Center, a Washington group that tracks environmental issues. A Koch spokesman says about half of the money went to Mercatus. In addition, the company's chief executive, Charles Koch, donated interests in limited partnerships to Mercatus that the think tank sold last year for $6.1 million. Mr. Koch is a Mercatus director.
A predecessor to Mercatus was founded at Rutgers University by a former economics professor, Richard Fink, who also started an anti-tax group. Mr. Fink later moved the think tank to George Mason, a Virginia state university that has become a center for free-market economics. In 1990, Mr. Fink joined Koch Industries, where he is now an executive vice president overseeing lobbying and communications. He remains a Mercatus director."
"Lisa Heinzerling, a Georgetown University law professor, says Mercatus "cites the most outlandish costs of regulation." She helped organize a liberal think tank called the Center for Progressive Regulation to counter Mercatus's influence.
Partly because of Mercatus's reputation for ideological fervor, White House regulators have recently distanced themselves from the think tank. The White House regulatory office has approved a number of regulations that Mercatus criticized, including the diesel-engine rule."
"Ms. Dudley argues that even under Republican rule overall regulatory costs continue to rise. The answer, she says: more Mercatus studies to show the real burden of red tape. "Clean air sounds so good," she says. "But what are the costs? They're hidden.""
I am sure all those oil gas and etc companies funded Mercatus because out of the goodness of their hearts not because it was a think-tank out to free them of regulatory burdens.
This isn't an objective person, this is an anti regulatory person. to quote a Nature editorial "The motivation of Graham, his mooted successor Susan Dudley of George Mason University in Virginia, and indeed of President Bush himself, is not really in doubt. What they want is not better regulation, but less regulation. They should admit as much, instead of hiding their agenda behind the mantra of 'sound science'."
here
Perhaps, given the background provided by llamasex, it's worth considering Mercatus with more than a bit of skepticism.
here is a history from burnsurgery.org
link
I feel sorry for your children, since your ignorance put them in danger.
Also just like with the fridges above regulation saved lives.
As has been previously posted, it was quite frustrating for those of us forced by gov't regs. to become "early adopters," but toilet technology has come a long way. Now I can say with confidence that, if it doesn't go down on the first flush, you're likely (and well-advised, less you set-off an overflow) to have to pull out the plunger anyway. Further, for those prodigious producers of excrement who can't be bothered, they can go to the American Standard Champion.
Of course, anyone really concerned about water usage should consider the Caroma SmartFlush (4.5/3L vs. 6L for typical US toilet).
Anyway, as for the attempts to block Ms. Dudley's confirmation, this is hardball politics of the worst kind. I know it's been said before, the enviro-nuts are jihadists, and feel any depravity is ok, as it serves what they consider to be "the greater good."
Interesting, could you provide some details on what those regulatory and deregulatory initiatives were? The one that comes to mind is the Clear Skies initiative which dealt with some of the perverse incentives built into the Clean Air Act that resulted in companies not wanting to upgrade their power plants for fear of having to meet the new standards (the result being that the plants continued to operate and pollute more than they would have if they had been repaired). I would be interested in learning more about other efforts to improve the cost-benefit ratio of government regulations.
Dressing my children in natural fabrics put them in danger? Not as much danger as using the only government approved flame retardant for childrens sleepwear (at that time). I am responsible for my childrens safety, not the government, and I would never make my children wear a carcinogenic flame retardant to bed for 10 hours a night as the Government ordered me too.
Not only is the accusation against Dudley precisely wrong, as Prof Adler mentioned above, but the accusation against Tomlinson is precisely wrong too! Tomlinson wasn't someone who "disagree[d] with what the core purpose" of CPB was. He just wanted CPB to act in a more politically neutral manner, instead of funding predominantly left-wing shows.
Sheesh.
wiki link
a real paper article on the investigation
I think the following clearly shows your deluded if you think he wanted things to be more politically neutral.
Kevin, you truly deserve some kind of award for blogospheric verbal valour for even posting that paragraph.
With an oak leaf cluster if "I can surly say" was a purposeful pun and not just a typo.
I think bringing the WSJ Editorial Report onto PBS goes against the high quality programming part :).
If you can't see how a right wing extremist ideologue who goes around the law to push more conservative programs, and a more conservative board goes against the ideal of high quality not to mention
Because shows like WSJ one really help the un and underserved audiences.
mission statement
I actually think it goes further than that, I think the White House and many conservatives actually want to do away with PBS/NPR. Its hard to prove that because the idea is to strangle programs and not be outspoken about your true goals.
It is obvious that you are an unrepentant nanny-stater. The best thing the government could do to serve the broadcasting needs of children and minorities (and everyone else) is shutdown 90% of the broadcast and cable channels. Other than that everything else is a waste of time and money. Because no one (especially the underpriviliged) watches any of the crap on PBS unless they are being forced to. And the statistics bear me out. People want to watch crap and as long as crap is available on the tube PBS is going to get a miniscule audience.
I say this for your own good because you are one of God’s creatures and he loves you.
LOL. You get the prize for astute reading.
On to Lamasex' post: You don't see the bias in that article? Like perhaps it would degrade the quality of the investigation to inform the staff;. And, as for the WSJER, don't you think it might be in order, to counter the blatantly Anti-Bush McLaughlin Group? (BTW, I watch both, along with Tony Brown's Journal, To The Contrary, and Think Tank.)
You should check yourself, before making such ridiculous posts. Personally, I feel like an idiot when I am so easily countered.
As for the WSJ quality it was an attack on the show itself, which is really really bad. I like the WSJ (I have a subscription) in fact the facts about the Mercatus Center came from an WSJ editorial. Still the TV show was horrible and not worthy of PBS, hell it isn't worthy of its 4am timeslot it has on Fox News.
Trust me, hatred isn't good for you. Give it up. Do it for the children.