Summary: Comments were provided on the Regulatory Flexibility and Administrative Reform Act of 1979, a bill which proposed to: (1) provide for explicit congressional oversight vested in the Congressional Budget Office (CBO); and (2) establish the Regulatory Policy Board, to provide for the regulatory analysis of proposed rules, to require the evaluation of existing regulations, to require Congress and the President to review certain regulatory agencies, to increase competition in regulated industries, and to make other improvements in regulatory procedures. GAO expressed support for the thrust of the bill but made several suggestions for improving it.
Assigning an oversight role to CBO would duplicate current GAO responsibilities, would be wasteful, and would prove confusing to congressional committees and to the agencies concerned. The Regulatory Policy Board which the act proposed to establish would perform functions already assigned to other agencies, while no evidence had been presented to show that the coordination mechanisms of the federal government, such as liaison groups and efforts of the Office of Management and Budget, were not achieving the necessary coordination of regulatory programs. If Congress should establish the Board, attention should be given to avoiding duplication of functions already assigned to various agencies. In addition the act's elevation of various elements of regulatory analysis into legislatively mandated requirements could unnecessarily burden regulatory agencies and delay needed regulations without necessarily offering any offsetting gain. Enactment of a separate set of procedures for regulation or for any specified area of public policy, as the bill proposed, would tend to lock Congress into a focus on one policy area despite changing circumstances. It was, therefore, recommended that the section of the act establishing procedures for review of 28 specified regulatory agencies be dropped. Provisions of the Act that would vest with the Chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States the authority to set qualifications for Administrative Law Justices were also opposed. Recruitment and evaluation of these Justices should remain with the Office of Personnel Management.
