Gary Bass is angry. The executive director of OMB Watch--a nonprofit advocacy group that monitors federal regulatory processes, focusing on the Office of Management and Budget--feels that he was "misled" recently by Senate Governmental Affairs Committee staffers.
Bass was prepared to testify before the panel in late July about a bill that would require OMB to make biennial reports to Congress detailing the costs and benefits of regulatory programs. His assessment: The legislation would create "silly paperwork" and "yield very little information that is of use, policywise."
When advised that his testimony was not needed because the hearing was canceled, Bass inquired about the bill's status. He was not told of plans to move the measure on the Senate floor two days later. "They stuck it in the dead of night on to an appropriations bill," he complained. "It was pretty duplicitous. It's one thing to lose on an issue, it's another to [lose as a result of] tricks. The staff operated in a very inappropriate manner."
But a spokeswoman for Sen. Fred D. Thompson, R-Tenn., the committee chairman and bill sponsor, dismissed the criticism and pointed out that the proposal has bipartisan support. "This is a piece of good-government legislation that passed unanimously in the Senate and with no objection from the White House," said deputy press secretary Esther Campi. "We're not surprised that OMB Watch opposes it. They've opposed every piece of moderate, bipartisan reform legislation that has been offered in recent memory."
The Senate passed the measure on the night of July 29, as part of the Treasury-Postal appropriations bill, in its rush toward the August recess. Thompson was quick to note that Democratic Sens. John B. Breaux of Louisiana and Charles S. Robb of Virginia were co-sponsors, declaring, "We represent diverse political viewpoints, but we all agree that we need to improve our regulatory system and make it more open and accountable."
The House did not include a measure similar to Thompson's in its version of the appropriations bill, and differences between the two chambers will be worked out in a conference committee. The White House, for its part, doesn't have a firm position on Thompson's measure. A Clinton administration official said that there's been insufficient time to study the proposal, but added that such reports can be useful, though they take "a lot of staff time and work."
Meanwhile, the fate of Thompson's broader effort to overhaul the regulatory process in legislation that he's co-sponsoring with Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., is very much in doubt. Although Levin's tireless lobbying of the White House was recently rewarded by an endorsement of the bill by OMB, the time remaining in the session to consider it is limited.
Endorsement by OMB, furthermore, was conditioned on "no changes" being made to the measure--a condition that is extremely unlikely to be met. Some senior House Democrats in late July fired off a letter to OMB saying the bill takes a "one-size-fits-all" approach that fails to account for the wide range of agencies that it will affect. They warned the measure could have "serious, and perhaps unintended, adverse consequences."
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