CLOSING THE BIG HOLE

We’ve been running a series of articles regarding this Administration’s efforts to take charge of the Executive Branch and assert control over the regulatory reform process. Our previous note – Regulatory Reform and the Administrative State – identified a significant hole in the process which allowed important regulatory proposals to escape meaningful review to determine whether they were:

   1. Justifiable through cost benefit analysis

   2. Consistent with Administration policy, and

   3. Supported by the best reading of the applicable law.

This note focuses on the important role of the embedded DOGE teams in assuring that every new regulatory proposal is subject to this sort of review at the Agency level. In the absence of effective actions by the embedded DOGE teams, the majority of new regulatory proposals may well escape the review that the new regulatory reform system is intended to provide.