Regulatory Budgets & Executive Order 13771

On September 13, the Gray Center hosted a conference on The Future of White House Regulatory Oversight and Cost-Benefit Analysis. At the conference, a number of scholars presented new research on cost-benefit analysis and the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, or “OIRA.” All of the papers are available on the Gray Center’s web site. And the conference was keynoted by the White House’s Acting Administrator for the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Paul Ray.

Our third panel focused on the use of “regulatory budgets” in White House regulatory oversight. For decades, scholars have debated whether agencies should be bound by “regulatory budgets”; in 2017, President Trump signed Executive Order 13771, placing a kind of regulatory budget on executive agencies. At our conference, Jim Tozzi presented a new paper on OIRA and regulatory budgets. He was joined in the discussion by former OIRA Administrator Chris DeMuth and Professor Richard Pierce, and also by Anthony Campau, who served OIRA under Administrator Neomi Rao, and helped with the initial implementation of EO 13771. The discussion was moderated by the Gray Center’s Deputy Director, Andrew Kloster. The papers and video are available at https://administrativestate.gmu.edu/events/the-future-of-white-house-regulatory-oversight-and-cost-benefit-analysis/.

Featuring Jim Tozzi, Chris DeMuth, Richard Pierce, Anthony Campau, and Andrew Kloster