Virginia Foxx Grills OMB Official On 'Thinly Veiled Attempt To Stack The Deck' For Biden Regulations

4 months ago

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00:00Thank you. Chair and I recognize Dr. Fox from North Carolina. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank

00:04you, Mr. Miller, for being here. I have several questions, so I'd like to try to get through as

00:10many of them as I can. The November 2023 revisions to OMB Circular A4 are a departure from the

00:16bipartisan and widely accepted practice and principles dating back to the Clinton era.

00:22The recent revision is little more than a thinly veiled attempt to stack the deck in favor of

00:27extremely costly new regulations. Why did the Biden administration feel the need to depart

00:33from the established bipartisan framework and guardrails for considering different regulatory

00:38approaches seeking to give Americans an accurate representation of the true cost of new regulations?

00:46Congresswoman, thank you for the question. My purview is over our management apparatus,

00:51not our regulatory and information. What I will say is we take cost-benefit analysis

00:56very seriously. The intent of updating A4 was to update approaches that are used to modernize the

01:04way we do cost-benefit analysis to make sure that we're taking all of the costs and all of the

01:08benefits adequately when we're looking at regulation. Again, for specifics, I can come back

01:14to you. I don't oversee our regulatory operations. I have a follow-up. It seems to me that the OMB

01:20circular A4 revisions are just a ploy to allow agencies to overstate the benefits and undercount

01:27the cost regulations that we all know will bankrupt Americans so long as they can contain

01:34certain buzzwords like climate change and social cost of carbon. My concern is that this new

01:40framework will allow even more expensive regulations to be justified moving forward by, quote,

01:47offsetting them, end quote, with so-called inflated so-called benefits. Can you tell

01:54me the total projected cost of new regulations and rules cleared by OMB in the last roughly

02:01six months since the circular A4 was revised in November, and how does that figure compare

02:07to the six-month period before the circular A4 was revised?

02:12Congressman, again, the regulatory and information activities of OMB aren't under my purview.

02:18It is, we take cost-benefit analysis very seriously, making sure that we're having the

02:23most accurate for both costs and benefits. Okay. Well, this is a real specific question I'm

02:29asking you, so I will ask you to give me the information within a week because it shouldn't

02:35be any problem to tell us, compare what I just said to you with the other time. So I'm going

02:41to ask you, Mr. Chairman, for that information within a week. One of the key points made in the

02:46Government Accountability Office's, or GAO, high-risk list is that the Office of Management

02:52and Budget is critical to addressing high-risk areas because of its role in leading and

02:58supporting agencies. How can Congress help OMB conduct more meaningful oversight to help

03:05improve high-risk programs? Thank you, Congresswoman, and this is an area that I've been very

03:09focused on in partnership with GAO. I referenced a recent discussion that we had with the

03:14Bureau of Prisons, which is one of the newest issues added to the high-risk list. Our focus

03:21is making sure that there are two things happening on every single one of the high-risk list

03:25items. One, leadership attention. It is absolutely imperative that we have leadership attention

03:31in an area, making sure that leaders of relevant agencies, if we don't, that would be a shared

03:35interest of OMB and Congress to make sure that we have leadership attention on every

03:39single one of those, and that we're making positive progress everywhere we can. In GAO's

03:43last high-risk list report, they noted that we were making progress on 16 of the high-risk

03:48list areas, which they noted was the most in a two-year period. We still have work to

03:53do, and I would like to do better than that. Well, again, let me have a quick follow-up.

03:58OMB is one of the largest agencies that does not have an Office of Inspector General. What

04:04role do you think an Inspector General at OMB would play, and how would it help make

04:08OMB more accountable? We have been very focused on the oversight community, both GAO and IGs.

04:16In late 2021, December of 2021, we issued guidance to all agencies on the importance

04:24of collaboration between agencies and IGs. That's been a hallmark effort of this administration.

04:32Okay. One more question. I authored the GREAT Act, which set data standards for agency-driven

04:37data collection across the federal government. Can you tell me why each agency is left to its

04:43own devices to design its own grant application processes and post-award forms without

04:50standardization, and are there efforts to standardize the grant application process

04:56across federal agencies? Congresswoman, thank you for that, and this is a topic that has come up

05:01today and something that I appreciate your leadership on. We absolutely want to be moving

05:06towards a broader enterprise approach. We just overhauled our uniform grants guidance to drive

05:11that kind of consistency. We're pushing agencies to implement that guidance by the end of the fiscal

05:16year and to dramatically simplify their approaches to notices of funding opportunity for more

05:21consistency, especially for recipients that are receiving funds from multiple agencies.

05:26Well, it's very important to our constituents all across the country that this be done. They are

05:32suffering as a result of your not doing that, and we need to do it. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

Virginia Foxx Grills OMB Official On 'Thinly Veiled Attempt To Stack The Deck' For Biden Regulations

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