Regulatory Transactions

From: ThinkAdvisor

On one-year anniversary of Obama endorsement of the proposal, ICI sends letter to the OMB about DOL’s justification for the rule

By Melanie Waddell, Washington Bureau Chief, Investment Advisor Magazine

Letters of opposition continue flowing into the Office of Management Budget as it reviews the Department of Labor’s rule to change the definition of fiduciary on retirement advice.

The Investment Company Institute on Monday told OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) that DOL’s rule must include “significant new data” in its regulatory impact analysis to support DOL’s “massive overhaul of the retirement marketplace” and said there were three major factual holes in the DOL’s proposal.

From: Feedstuffs

The regulatory rule-making for the removal of country-of-origin labeling (COOL) requirements for beef and pork muscle cuts, ground beef and ground pork has been logged for review at the Office of Management & Budget (OMB).

In December, Congress approved a fiscal 2016 catch-all federal spending bill that included repeal of the meat labeling provision of the COOL law in order to avoid trade retaliation from Canada and Mexico. OMB must review all regulations before they are implemented.

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From: Inside EPA

The White House Office of Management & Budget (OMB) is reviewing EPA’s draft formal response to Government Accountability Office (GAO) criticisms that the agency violated legal restrictions on use of appropriations in how it promoted its Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction rule, says EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy.

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The controversy concerning the integrity of industry sponsored science has been going on for years.  However what continues to be absent from the debate is the Data [Information] Quality Act which was passed some fifteen years ago with the intent of breaking this impasse.

More specifically the Act sets standards for all scientific data disseminated by any federal agency. In addition it sets standards for all data submitted to a federal agency by an outside party.

Why then has not this tie breaker entered in to the industry sponsored science debate? It is most certainly not because it is not needed.

From: Congressional Review Service | CRS Insight

Christopher M. Davis, Richard S. Beth

With a change in the occupancy of the White House taking place in 2017, some in Congress are paying renewed attention to a parliamentary mechanism that might enable a new Congress and new President to overturn agency final rules of the Obama Administration issued after mid-May 2016.

From: American Action Forum

By Sam Batkins

From: Land Line

From: Bloomberg/BNA

By Sean Forbes

The Department of Labor sent its long-sought, long-fought fiduciary rule to the Office of Management and Budget for review, putting the financial industry one step away from dealing with new requirements aimed at preventing conflicts of interest in the provision of retirement investment advice.

The final rule was received by the OMB on Jan. 28, according to a posting on that agency’s site. A rule review by the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs is generally limited to 90 days, though the OMB director can extend it once for up to 30 days and the head of a rulemaking agency can extend it indefinitely. With three months for review, the final rule could be sent back to the DOL by the end of April, although it might be released even sooner.