While the Environmental Protection Agency is used to drawing fire for its regulatory proposals, one of its latest proposed rules should draw something else: bipartisan support. The rule, which focuses on the cost-benefit analysis of environmental regulations, has been endorsed by administrations of both parties and strikes a tone of transparency and fiscal common sense we could use at the moment. After all, it only makes sense that the EPA propose rules that carefully and systematically weigh benefits against costs.
The groundwork for EPA’s proposal began in earnest with President Trump’s 2017 Executive Order 13777 that asked federal agencies to review their regulations and identify those where their costs exceed their intended benefits. A year later, the EPA issued a notice that it would pursue a benefit-cost analysis and in 2019 issued a memorandum from Administrator Andrew Wheeler to make sure that its benefit-cost analysis was transparent and consistently applied through best practices.