Regulatory Overhaul Mandates $100M Cost-Benefit Analysis for New Major Rules, Centralizing Power in OIRA

The Regulatory Accountability Act is basically a massive rewrite of how federal agencies—like the EPA, FDA, or OSHA—go about making new rules. If you’ve ever felt like regulations pop up out of nowhere, this bill aims to make the process slower, more transparent, and significantly more difficult to finalize, especially for rules with a big price tag.

The New Definition of “Major”

The core of this bill is Section 2, which changes the language around what counts as a “Major Rule.” Under the new definition, any regulation expected to have an annual economic effect of $100 million or more is automatically considered major. Why does this matter? Because once a rule is designated as major, it triggers a cascade of new requirements that agencies must follow before it can be enacted. This includes a deep dive into cost-benefit analysis, which must be measured over the same time frame and cover both direct and indirect costs—even how the rule affects suppliers and customers of the regulated entities.

Full Disclosure, Longer Waits

For anyone interested in the science or economics behind a new regulation, Section 3 is a big win for transparency. When an agency proposes a rule, they must now immediately dump every study, model, and piece of information they relied on into a public docket. No more waiting years or filing FOIA requests to see the data. The catch? If the agency cites copyrighted material, you, the public, have to go track down the full copy from the private entity that owns the rights. So, while the intent is good, accessing the full picture might still be a scavenger hunt.

The public comment period also gets longer. For a major rule, you get a minimum of 90 days to submit feedback, plus an additional 30 days just to respond to what other people said. This means if you’re a small business owner trying to keep up with proposed changes, you’ll have more time to weigh in, but the whole process for getting a rule finalized is going to stretch out considerably, potentially delaying necessary protections or updates.

The OIRA Gatekeeper

One of the most significant shifts is the power given to the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). Under Section 3, agencies must send their proposed rules to the OIRA Administrator for review before they can be published. For major rules, the agency must choose the alternative that “maximizes net benefits.” They can only pick a more or less costly option if the Administrator approves it. This essentially makes the OIRA Administrator the final gatekeeper for economically significant regulations, injecting a single point of centralized review and potential delay into the process.

This centralization of power is backed up by Section 4, which significantly limits judicial review over the Administrator’s actions or inactions concerning rulemaking. If the Administrator decides to hold up a rule, challenging that decision in court becomes extremely difficult. For regular people relying on agencies to finalize rules—like updating safety standards or environmental protections—this could mean lengthy delays with little recourse if the holdup is purely political or procedural.

Mandatory Check-Ins

The bill also introduces a new concept: mandatory retrospective assessment. For every final major rule, the agency must establish a framework for assessing its effectiveness later on. They have to check if the actual costs and benefits matched the predictions within 10 years of the rule taking effect. This is great for accountability; it forces agencies to prove their rules work as advertised. However, Section 3 also limits judicial review here: a court can only check if the agency published the paperwork (the framework and assessment), not whether the assessment itself was accurate or if the rule is actually working. The rule still takes effect even if the agency fails to publish the required framework. This means the court can order the agency to fix the paperwork, but it can’t invalidate a bad rule based on a flawed assessment.

What About Rules Already in the Pipeline?

Section 6 includes a crucial exemption: any rules that are already being worked on or have been finalized before this Act becomes law are completely exempt from these new, stricter requirements. This means agencies could rush to finalize controversial regulations before the new, time-consuming requirements kick in, allowing those rules to bypass the intense cost-benefit scrutiny mandated by this bill.