In the News

Budgets are about choices and priorities. We promote policies and fund services we believe the government should pursue because we want those things to generate positive outcomes for our society. We weigh the costs of implementing those policies or programs against the worth or value of the outcomes they produce. In other words, “Costs can only be understood in light of the benefits…they would generate,” as Jennifer Rosenberg of the Institute for Policy Integrity has stressed.

Michael Livermore at the Institute for Policy Integrity explains:

It is true that only a small percentage of the EPA’s estimated benefits from the mercury standards come from mercury reduction ($6 million in benefits out of a total of $90 billion). But that’s because the benefits from having less mercury in our water streams, oceans and, subsequently, the seafood we eat are extremely difficult to quantify.

Would you recommend that a pregnant sister or daughter eat a seafood feast every day? Probably not, since doctors routinely warn of the risks of mercury exposure in unborn children.

Legislative efforts to halt the EPA’s first ever rule to prevent the emissions of mercury and other toxic are a mistake. Even delaying the rule would come at the grave expense of the public’s health. It’s a rule with $90 billion in annual benefits and that’s likely to be a serious underestimate.

The study findings are borne out by the facts. A study from NYU’s Institute for Policy Integrity found that usage of the phrase “job-killing regulation” in newspapers has increased 17,550% between 2007 and 2011. And media figures have indeed thrown around the phrase “job killers” or similar terms to attack progressive government policies. Furthermore, media figures have repeatedly launched misleading attacks on Obama’s jobs record.

Update: A staffer at NYU’s Institute for Policy Integrity passed along this critique of the CPR report cited above, from Michael Livermore, the institute’s executive director, and Richard Revesz, the dean of NYU’s law school. From the critique…

“I am not sure the business community sees any particular benefit to playing nice on these issues,” notes Michael A. Livermore, executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law. “Clearly, they don’t see it in their interest to give the administration a lot of credit for what they have done so far.”

Jason Schwartz, legal director for the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, praised the agency’s draft recommendations but warned that an overreaction to last-minute rule making can create problems of its own.

He said the legislation being considered in Congress, for example, goes too far because it prevents federal agencies from not only proposing regulations during the midnight period but also approving regulations that were proposed before the midnight period.

“If a rule was proposed a long time ago, and has gone through all the required analysis and public scrutiny and internal vetting, then finalizing it in the midnight period doesn’t raise concerns for us,” he said.

He added that he believes the Administrative Conference’s proposal will do a better job than the legislation at addressing the real problem of midnight rule making, which is that administrations eager to get their regulations in place truncate the amount of time allotted for analysis and public comment.

Last week, the Western Energy Alliance released a report (PDF) claiming 120,905 jobs could be created if the U.S. government would just make it easier to drill for gas on public lands. There is no shortage of papers like this one, but there is a serious shortage of scrutiny of their results.

In this case, as with many others, the suggestion seems to be that a certain number of jobs could be gained by a policy change—that the nation’s economy will be 120,905 jobs richer and that 120,905 people who currently do not have a job will now be employed.

If only it were that easy. But it’s not, and it is misleading to suggest that it is.

Jason Schwartz is legal director at NYU’s Institute for Policy Integrity.

Jason Schwartz: Unfortunately, the trend across the country is toward adding more levels of regulatory review that aren’t particularly helpful.

Especially when, according to Schwartz, states regulate almost 20 percent of the U.S. economy.

This blog integrates material from recent analyses by the Institute for Policy Integrity and Economic Policy Institute (click here, here, and here) showing why “job-killing regulation” claims are bad economics and factually incorrect (click here for a broader discussion of the role of regulation in a well functioning economy).