Republicans Pitch FCC Reforms as Codifying Obama Regulation Review Principles

House Republicans on the Commerce Committee are pitching their Federal Communications Commission regulation reform bills (HR 3309 and 3310) as a way to apply President Barack Obama's regulatory reform principles to independent agencies -- in this case the FCC -- not bound by his Executive Order on regulatory review.

"Many of the provisions are based on principles contained in the president's January 2011 Executive Order," said committee staffers. "Because that order applies only to executive agencies, it does not bind the Commission. While Chairman Genachowski has made good progress in improving process, only statutory changes can ensure that best practices continue from one administration to the next." The staffers suggested that the FCC's handling of the recently released Universal Service Reform order was not one of those best practices. "The Commission added hundreds of pages of documents into the record at the last minute, giving parties almost no time to respond," they wrote in the memo." And the Commission has still not released the text of the adopted order, preventing stakeholders and the public from knowing what the Commission has done." The bills would require the FCC to justify regulations according to costs and benefits, survey the state of the marketplace periodically, and before initiating any new rulemakings, take other steps to make sure the public is getting bang for its regulatory buck, apply shot clocks to decisions, put a "narrowly tailored" restriction on all merger conditions, and a lot more.