Introduction.

• Author: Brannon, Ike

Shortly after taking office, the Biden administration issued several executive orders and other documents intended to change how the Executive Office of the President handles regulatory policy. President Biden's Executive Order 13992 repealed outgoing president Donald Trump's EO 13771, which established a "one-in, two-out" regulatory budget that constrained the number of regulations that could be issued. The Biden administration also put forth a memorandum on "Modernizing Regulatory Review" that placed a hold on all Trump administration rules that had not yet been finalized, to review them to decide whether to allow them to go forward--a standard procedure for any new administration.

The Modernizing Regulatory Review memorandum does several things. First, it reaffirms EO 12866, issued by President Bill Clinton and with roots going back to Ronald Reagan's administration, that requires that no major regulations be issued unless their estimated benefits outweigh their costs. Second, it directs executive branch agencies to expand how they do cost-benefit analysis (CBA) so that the analysis considers issues that are thought to be difficult to quantify but are a matter of some import to the Biden agenda, such as examining the distributional consequences of a regulation.

The memorandum also asks the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), the office inside of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that conducts regulatory review, to work with agencies to...