GOP Lawmakers Ask for Info on Biden Admin Actions to ‘Upend the Regulatory Review and Analysis Process’

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) questions witnesses during the first public hearing of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 8, 2023. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Reps. James Comer (R-Ky.) and Pat Fallon (R-Texas) have asked for information from the Biden administration on actions they say “upend the regulatory review and analysis process.”

In a May 4 letter to Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Shalanda Young and Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) Administrator Richard Revesz, the lawmakers expressed alarm over the implementation of an executive order titled “Modernizing Regulatory Review” and an OMB letter on “Regulatory Analysis.”

“These actions dramatically threaten to alter federal regulatory development and drive Americans’ regulatory burdens beyond already record-breaking levels. We request a staff-level briefing to obtain additional information about these policies,” wrote Comer, who is the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, and Fallon, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs.

“Even under pre-existing rules for federal regulatory development, the Biden administration’s pace of regulation and escalating regulatory burdens has been breathtaking,” they continued.

Comer and Fallon broke down the numbers.

“In its first two years, the Administration surpassed by far the cumulative costs and paperwork burdens imposed by the Trump and Obama administrations—imposing $318.1 billion in new costs and 217.4 million new paperwork hours,” they wrote. “This, of course, was on top of what already were estimated to be cumulative regulatory costs on American households and businesses of at least $1.9 trillion per year before the Biden administration even took office.”

Comer and Fallon warned that the executive order “threatens to bias agency administrative records unfairly towards expanded regulation” as “the order charges agencies to expand ‘inclusive’ public participation in rulemaking and promote ‘equitable and meaningful participation by a range of interested or affected parties.’”

The congressmen accused the administration of pursuing an ideological agenda with the executive order.

“This language echoes the Biden Administration’s use of the terms ‘inclusivity’ and ‘equity’ as a mantle to pursue left-wing causes. We are concerned it is a smokescreen for promoting improper agency grassroots lobbying to guarantee pro-regulatory allies’ public comments tilt agencies’ administrative records towards such causes—just as in the infamous case of the Obama administration’s Waters of the United States Rule.”

Comer and Fallon requested from Young and Revesz a briefing to the Oversight Committee staff “on the genesis, purposes, and planned implementation” of the executive order and the OMB letter “as soon as possible, but by no later than May 11, 2023.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to OMB for comment; OIRA is a part of OMB.