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Publication

Rewriting the Rules

Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs
Abstract
The Majority Staff of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs reported on the order from President Bush's Chief of Staff Andrew Card to freeze the Federal regulatory process on the President's inauguration day. Senator Joseph I. Lieberman directed his staff to review the Card memo and its effect on three rules that were considered final before the memo: the Department of Agriculture’s rule conserving roadless areas in national forests, the Department of the Interior’s (DOI) rule regulating hard rock mining on public lands, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s rule capping the permissible level of arsenic in drinking water. The report found that the Bush administration weakened the first two rules, and caused months of delay in implementing the third, despite the extensive public comment and scrutiny the rules had already gone through. Ultimately the Majority Staff of the committee concluded that: "implementation of the Card memo was of questionable legality and gave an early warning of the administration’s lack of respect for the process of developing regulations, including those providing a variety of important environmental and public protections."
Date
2002-10-24
Document Type
Senate Majority Staff Report
Serial Number
Document Length
90 pages
Congress
107
Relation
DOI
Keywords
Staff Reports
PAP Major Code
20: Government Operations
PAP Minor Code
2002: Government Efficiency, General Regulatory Policy and Bureaucratic Oversight
Related Hearings
Press Releases and Contextual Information