Publication of the guidance comes a year after President Obama signed an executive order calling on the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other agencies to consider the cumulative effect of their regulations.
“Agencies should consider cumulative effects and opportunities for regulatory harmonisation as part of their analysis of particular rules”, Cass Sunstein, head of the US Office of the Administrator, wrote.
Release of the guidance coincides with the progression of an act to limit adoption of new regulations. In a vote last week the House Judiciary Committee passed the Regulatory Freeze for Jobs Act of 2012.
“The Freeze Act gives small businesses a much-needed break from new significant Federal regulations until the unemployment rate stabilises at 6 per cent”, the Republican Lamar Smith said in discussions before the vote. Others were less enthusiastic though.
“All this nonsense about deregulation is saying let us make this country less safe. Let us have more people poisoned by uninspected food, all in the name of making life more lucrative for big business, but with the excuse of jobs. Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense”, the Democrat Jerrold Nadler said.
Nadler proposed changing the name of the bill to the Nuclear Death and Destruction Act of 2012. To counter claims the act would make the US less safe its authors included provisions for ‘imminent threats’.
“The underlying bill provides exemptions for rules that protect against imminent threats to health and safety, enforcing criminal laws, providing for the national security of the US, or that are necessary to implement international trade agreements”, Tim Griffin, the Republican who introduced the bill, said.