OMB Finalizes Significant Overhaul in Federal Regulations

Officials at the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), a branch of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), have overhauled how the federal government assesses the costs and benefits of regulation and some government spending programs, clearing a path for more aggressive efforts to fight climate change and help the poor. OIRA finalized a new and complicated set of rules that would change how federal agencies tally and weigh the potential value and harm of new regulations related to climate change, taxation, the distribution of disaster relief assistance, and more. The newly issued changes to the guidelines will require regulators to pay more attention to economic inequality, the shifting economics of a warming planet, and other data sources that progressive economists have long complained are missing from the government’s cost-benefit analyses. But the simplest way to sum up their effects is generationally: They would enable the government to impose more costly regulations for Americans today, in hopes of saving money and lives in the future.