The Case for a Congressional Regulation Office
"The modern administrative state is too immense for [Congress to micromanage], but it is also too powerful to be left to its own devices."
What It’s About
Philip Wallach and Kevin Kosar advocate the establishment of a Congressional Regulation Office (CRO). They argue that, in the modern era, Congress has ceded too much of its authority over regulatory policy to the executive branch, undermining democratic legitimacy and sparking a messy proliferation of regulatory frameworks. A CRO would counterbalance this trend by equipping Congress with the tools and capacity to be more involved in governance.
Upshot
Wallach and Kosar's CRO would:
- Conduct cost-benefit analyses of major regulations.
- Provide retrospective evaluations of existing regulatory regimes.
- Address redundancies and inefficiencies in areas of overlapping agency jurisdiction.
- Foster more informed congressional decision-making on regulatory policy.
Why It Matters
Greater connectivity between branches on agency rulemaking would enhance the work of the executive branch, especially in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Loper Bright decision, which curtailed agencies’ rulemaking discretion.
Who Wrote It
Philip Wallach is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
Kevin R. Kosar is a senior fellow at AEI.
