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18 Admin. L. News 1 (1992-1993)

handle is hein.journals/admreln18 and id is 1 raw text is: ADMINISTRATIVE
LAW      NEWS       Fall 1992
LAV:V NEVol. 18, No.1

Bill Clinton and Administrative Law

George Bush, first as Vice President and Chair of President Reagan's Regulatory Reform Task Force, and later as
President himself, has played an important role in the development of administrative law and regulatory practice
over the past twelve years. A new President might wish to make various changes, or he might accept much of what
has changed in administrative law i the past decade. The Administrative Law News compiled a list of questions
to be submitted to the Clinton and Perot campaigns regarding administrative law and regulatory practice. Those
questions and Governor Clinton's responses follow.

Q: President Reagan issued and President Bush
continued Executive Order 12,291, which imposes
certain requirements on executive agencies engaged
in rulemaking. In particular, it requires agencies to
submit proposed and final rules to the Office of
Management and Budget for review before they can
be published; it requires agencies to make regulatory
impact analyses for any rule having more than $100
million impact; and it requires agencies to adopt the
regulatory alternative that has the least net cost to
society.
Would you continue E.O. 12,291 or change it, and
if you would change it, how would you change it?
A: Executive Order 12,291 built upon President
Carter's regulatory reform executive order, and the
concept underlying these orders, including executive
oversight and coordination of agency rulemaking and
the desirability of conducting regulatory analyses, has
received bipartisan support as well as the endorse-
ment of the ABA. This concept, however, has been
perverted by the Reagan-Bush administrations,
which have created a secret review process, biased
against any regulation, particularly ones to protect
the health and safety of ordinary people. Accord-
ingly, the Clinton administration would retain those
features of these executive orders that further ra-
tional and coordinated decisionmaking, but we would
modify them to make the
process open and to give              In TI
appropriate weight to en-  F
vironmental, health, and   alm   Me  tivts.
safety issues, as well as SComitte   eng
Supreme Court News ..
economic issues.          News from the States ..
Recent Articles of Intere
Q: The Office of Infor-   1992-93 Section Direct
mation and Regulatory

Affairs in OMB, which administers E.O. 12291, and
now the Council on Competitiveness, headed by the
Vice President, have been criticized by some as se-
cretive and subversive of the regulatory process, by
providing a back-door means by which those op-
posed to regulation can have political influence on
regulations and delay substantially the promulga-
tion of regulations. Others have viewed those review
groups as necessary checks on agencies that have
enabled the President to see that the laws are faith-
fully executed.
What is your view about such review groups? What
sort of a group, if any, would you use to oversee the
regulatory activities of the bureaucracy; or what al-
ternative mechanism would you use to coordinate
and exercise policy review of the bureaucracy? How
would you avoid the appearance that the purpose of
these groups was to politicize the regulatory process?
A: The Council on Competitiveness currently acts
as a back-door entrance for special interests who
want to circumvent environmental, worker safety,
and consumer protection rules. Its refusal to dis-
close-either to Congress or to the public at large-
which regulations it interferes with, whom it meets
or hears from (and what their interests in those reg-
ulations are), or the basis of its decisions is inappro-
priate. Although Governor Clinton is not opposed to
the idea of a body similar
; Issue                to the Council whose
. function is to track and
coordinate regulations, to
.4 compile competitive state-
.6 ments and to conduct
.................... 8  similar activities, he is op-
.Pull-out              posed to such a body
(continued on page 9)

Copyright © 1992 American Bar Association

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