New: Staffing Congress to Strengthen Oversight of the Administrative State

Congress is ill equipped to assess regulations. Fortunately, that can be fixed.

Read the paper at https://www.understandingcongress.org/2024/03/11/staffing-congress-to-strengthen-oversight-of-the-administrative-state/

A great deal of lawmaking activity occurs in the form of regulation and regulatory activity. Dont believe it? Just look at this figure.

And this figure.

How can Congress possibly oversee all these regulations to ensure they are faithfully executing the law? Answer: It cannot.

My new paper shows that the growth in the scope of the executive branch has created a collosal regulatory apparatus, and that Congress has not given itself the capacity to oversee the excutive branch’s regulatory actions.

It argues that remedying that problem first and foremost requires the legislative branch to have more staff dedicated to regulatory oversight staff. Overseeing proposed regulations, analyzing their purported costs and benefits, and retrospectively reviewing regulations’ utility—the legislative branch needs a corps of wonks who get paid to do these tasks.

Otherwise, the same unhealthy dynamic occurs whereby presidents use regulations to craft new policies and Congress then rails about executive overreach and then waits for a private party to sue and the courts to decide the matter.

(Pssst—Philip Wallach and I made the case for a Congressional Regulation Office some years ago. Some in Congress have considered this idea. More should!)

Please have a look at it and let me know what you think!