The Zero Based Regulations Act enforces a review of existing regulations, mandating agencies to repeal rules unless they are proven necessary through retrospective analysis and public input, while also setting conditions for creating new regulations, including cost reduction and simplification of existing rules.
James Risch
Senator
ID
The Zero Based Regulations Act enforces a review of existing regulations, requiring agencies to justify their rules' costs and effectiveness, and to repeal a regulation before it is reviewed. To reinstate a repealed rule or create a new one, agencies must follow specific procedures, including public hearings and cost-benefit analyses, ensuring reduced regulatory burdens. Each agency must appoint a coordinator to manage the Act's implementation, and new regulations must meet strict criteria, such as reducing regulatory burdens or addressing public health threats, while repealing or simplifying existing rules. The Act aims to streamline and justify federal regulations through regular review and public input.
Sweeping 'Zero Based Regulations Act' Mandates Full Review and Repeal of Federal Rules, Caps Reinstatement Costs
The "Zero Based Regulations Act" proposes a fundamental overhaul of how federal agencies manage their rules. Essentially, it requires every agency to systematically review all its existing regulations – found in the Code of Federal Regulations (the official compilation of all federal agency rules) – on a schedule set by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), targeting about 20% of an agency's rules each year. Critically, Section 3 mandates that regulations must be repealed before their scheduled review. To bring a repealed rule back, agencies would have to start from scratch with a new rulemaking process, and any reinstated rule couldn't cost more than 70% of the original.
The Regulatory Reset Button: Automatic Repeal Hits the Books
This bill isn't just about reviewing rules; it's about hitting a reset button on a massive scale. Under Section 3, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) – an office within the White House's Office of Management and Budget that oversees federal regulations – will set an annual schedule for agencies to review their existing rules. The target is to get through about 20% of an agency's rulebook each year. But here’s the critical part: before a regulation even gets its scheduled review, the agency must repeal it. The bill also requires that the dates for these reviews be published on the cover of each part in the Code of Federal Regulations and on ecfr.gov, the online portal for federal rules, making the repeal-and-review timeline public.
Bringing Rules Back: The 70% Price Tag and Public Hurdles
So, what happens if an agency decides a repealed rule was actually important? Section 3(e) lays out a tough road back. To reinstate a rule, the agency has to go through the full, often lengthy, federal rulemaking process again, as defined in the Administrative Procedure Act (the law governing how federal agencies develop and issue regulations). This includes conducting a "retrospective analysis" to prove the rule's goals are still valid and justify its costs, and holding at least two public hearings to "maximize public participation." But the biggest hurdle might be financial: any new rule brought back to replace a repealed one "cannot impose more than 70% of the original estimated cost of the repealed rule." Imagine a critical safety regulation for things like clean drinking water or workplace safety; if its original cost was based on what was truly necessary, this 70% cap could mean a weaker, less protective standard, regardless of its proven benefits.
New Rules? Get in Line and Cut Something Else First
The Act doesn't just target old rules; it puts new ones on a tight leash too, at least from the date the law passes until the end of that fiscal year. Section 5 states that agencies generally can't create new regulations or significantly change existing ones unless they meet some stringent conditions. The big one? An agency must repeal or "significantly simplify" at least one existing rule to "decrease the overall regulatory burden" before it can issue a new one. This "repeal-one-to-make-one" requirement can be waived by the Director of the Office of Management and Budget if a new law or court order demands the rule, or if the President waives requirements for emergency reasons (as per 5 U.S.C. 553(b)(B)). Otherwise, agencies also need to hold a public hearing and complete a cost-benefit analysis (using an OIRA-designed form) for new rules, publishing it online within 90 days of starting the review. This could make it incredibly slow and difficult for agencies to respond to new challenges or update outdated standards effectively.
The New Rule Sheriffs and Centralized Control
To manage this massive overhaul, Section 4 requires each agency head to appoint an "administrative rules coordinator" from their legal team. This person will be wrestling with implementing these new procedures. However, a lot of the actual power to shape this process is centralized with OIRA. As mentioned, OIRA sets the review (and thus repeal) schedules (Section 3) and must develop the "standardized process" for the retrospective analyses agencies have to conduct. For new rules, OIRA also creates the standard form for cost-benefit analyses (Section 5). This setup gives OIRA significant influence over how all federal regulations are evaluated and managed, potentially overshadowing the specific expertise and needs of individual agencies responsible for protecting public health, safety, and the environment.