Why would anyone be against quality standards for information used in support of federal regulation? For some, the answer depends on whether such standards would hinder the government from passing new laws.

A recent email from the Director of Professional & Public Relations at my school steered me, along with the entire student body and personnel at Wake Forest University School of Law, to an op-ed written by our own Professor Sidney Shapiro on www.americanprogress.org. Right away, Professor Shapiro reassures his readers that they are not alone if they have never heard of
the federal Information Quality Act (IQA). Relieved, I read on. Then, as all professors nag, I did my homework about the IQA before making my conclusions.

Professor Shapiro writes that the IQA is an obscure, two-paragraph provision that was appended without Congressional hearing or debate to a massive appropriations bill. Most senators and representatives did not even know that they were voting for it. The provision requires the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to promulgate “policy and procedural guidance to
Federal agencies for ensuring and maximizing the quality, objectivity, utility and integrity of information.”

Professor Shapiro goes on to explain how the text of the IQA only applies to information “disseminated by Federal agencies,” like pamphlets and web materials, but the problem is that the administration extended the IQA beyond the text by applying it to information that the government uses to support the passage of regulations. Further, industry has used the requirements for quality data to delay and prevent agencies from passing new regulations. Meanwhile, the OMB, “ironically but not surprisingly,” continues to operate hampered by the IQA, even though a cost-benefit analysis would show this unwise. Professor Shapiro concludes with a suggestion that the IQA is “the most destructive half-page of law that most
people don’t know is on the books.”

With the highest respect for my professor, I must disagree with his analysis. First, the fact that the IQA was passed by Congressmen who did not even know what they were doing is not an argument for repealing a provision that reduces the speed and ease with which the government passes law in the first place. If anything, it should be a red flag to the current state of affairs that signing bills into law has become so commonplace that legislators don’t even know what they are passing. In creating so many laws, government inadvertently passed a provision that now frustrates its ability to pass even more costly regulation.

In addition, why should we not expect government to use quality information to support the passage of regulation, irrespective of any new, even obscure law requiring quality data? Professor Shapiro points out that the text of the IQA demands maximum quality, objectivity, utility and integrity only for information disseminated by Federal agencies. By requiring that the information used to support regulation also pass the same test of quality, Professor Shapiro opines that government has misapplied its own provision to extend beyond the language of what the provision requires. Yet this argument suggests that the government should not be required to maximize the quality of the information it uses to support regulation. On the contrary, surely we should expect the government to use only maximal-quality data to support the regulation it passes. Moreover, the government should not need to pass a law requiring it to do so.

Finally, obstacles to government’s exercise of power should be welcomed when government does not analyze the costs and benefits of its decisions. Professor Shapiro notes that it is ironic but not surprising that the OMB, which is usually fixated on cost-benefit analysis, has not examined the opportunity costs of the IQA. Then, the Professor criticizes the IQA for obstructing the passage of more regulations. It seems to me that if the OMB fails to examine the opportunity-costs of its own decisions, then one should hesitate to criticize a provision hindering the allocation of more power and resources to that office. In addition, questions should be raised when individuals campaign to give more discretion to an office that admittedly and unsurprisingly does not evaluate the costs and benefits of its own policies.

I applaud industry’s efforts to reduce regulatory action taken in reliance on questionable data. After all, the expense to industry of complying with government regulation gets passed on to consumers. (The National Center for Public Policy Research estimated last year that regulations cost the U.S. economy $843 billion each year, which comes out to $7,700 per household.) Why burden us with higher prices resulting from the costs of compliance with regulation that is based on unsound, unproven data? The way I see it, industry should take full advantage of the IQA to challenge such regulation based information that does not meet quality standards.

Carrie Ann Sitren is a first-year law student at Wake Forest University. Following her graduation in May 2007, she hopes to pursue a career promoting free markets, individual rights, and limited government.