The Real "Tsunami" in Federal Regulatory Policy

The federal regulatory system is in crisis. For the past several decades, a damaging set of mandates has continued to pile up on the books - mandates that threaten to stifle critical progress and undermine the nation's ability to compete in the world economy. Even today, out-of-touch policymakers are attempting to add still more of these mandates, without regard to their direct, indirect, and cumulative costs to society. One might say that we are facing a tsunami, a flood, or even an avalanche of these mandates. You've heard that sort of rhetoric before, I'm certain, deployed by opponents of various safeguards protecting consumers, workers, the environment, and more. But my diagnosis of the problem refers not to regulatory safeguards that agencies are, after all, obligated to issue as part of their statutory missions, but to the growing number of duplicative and utterly wasteful "lookback" or "retrospective review" requirements that opponents of regulation have sought to erect in their ceaseless bid to block effective implementation and enforcement of landmark protective statutes.