Drowning and desperate
Jul 27, 2017
WASHINGTON, DC -- Last Thursday the Trump Administration released the fall Unified Agenda laying out the regulatory and deregulatory actions they intend to pursue in the coming year.
The Unified Agenda is published twice a year, in the spring and fall, to provide transparency around regulatory and deregulatory actions underway by over 60 federal government departments, agencies, and commissions. It not only outlines upcoming new regulatory actions, but also lists actions that are ongoing or were proposed under the previous administration, but will not be addressed in the coming year.
The Administration is using the document to take credit for reducing regulations and signal what actions they will prioritize.
According to the White House, “the agenda represents ongoing progress toward the goals of more effective and less burdensome regulation,” and includes withdrawal of 469 actions originally proposed in the Fall 2016 agenda, reclassification of 391 active actions which will allow for further review, and the decrease of economically significant regulations to 58, or about 50 percent less than Fall 2016.
Additionally, for the first time, agencies will post and make public their list of ‘inactive’ rules — providing notice to the public of regulations still being reviewed or considered.
“The U.S. rice industry has always been supportive of reducing regulatory burdens for farmers and businesses, and we are pleased to see this Administration follow through with their promise to do just that,” said Ray Vester, Arkansas rice farmer and chairman of the USA Rice Regulatory Affairs and Food Safety Committee.
Items of interest to the U.S. rice industry are EPA’s upcoming actions to rescind and then revise the “Waters of the U.S.” rule, known as WOTUS, and the decision to move the New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) for Grain Dryers amendments to inactive status.
“By moving the NSPS for Grain Dryers to the list of inactive rules, it signals to us that EPA will likely not finalize or revise those amendments in the near future,” said Vester. “This would be a definite win for the rice industry and others affected by the rule.”