Midnight regulations and how the Obama administration can improve federal regulation

There has been a lot of talk about “midnight regulations” issued or initiated by the Bush administration in its final days (including the one that is the subject of this post by Holly).   Outgoing presidents, starting at least with Jimmy Carter, have had a practice of issuing many new regulatory decisions in a hurry as they leave office, with the goal of promoting their policy agendas long after they are gone.   Elizabeth Kolbert published a short piece about this phenomenon in the New Yorker this past December, with an insightful analysis of why presidents do this.  

While Kolbert notes that the phenomenon started in the Carter administration and was taken to new heights (or at least, to record numbers of Federal Register pages) by Bill Clinton, she adds that

What distinguishes this Administration in its final days—as in its earlier ones—is the purity of its cynicism. White House officials haven’t even bothered to argue that these new rules are in the public interest. Such a claim would, in any event, be impossible to defend, as just about every midnight regulation being proposed is, evidently, a gift to a favored industry.

Kolbert follows with specific examples.

Now,  OMB Watch and the Center for American Progress have teamed up to publish the white paper “After Midnight: The Bush legacy of deregulation and what Obama can do.”   From the Executive Summary: