Trump’s ‘regulatory czar’ advances in Senate

Neomi Rao, who Trump tapped to be the nation’s so-called “regulatory czar,” advanced in the Senate on Wednesday.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted 11 to 4 to send her nomination to lead the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs  (OIRA) to the Senate floor for a vote.  

The four Democrats, who voted against her, included Jon Tester (Mont.),
Gary Peters (Mich.),
Margaret Hassan (N.H.) and Kamala Harris (Calif.).

If confirmed as the OIRA administrator, Rao would oversee the review of all significant proposed and final rules.

During her confirmation hear, she told the committee that President Trump’s order requiring agencies to eliminate two rules for every new rule proposed is “an important step for considering how to reduce the overall regulatory burden.”

“The way I think it will work in practice is that agencies will identify regulations to eliminate and those regulations that might be ineffective ones or excessively burdensome,” she said.

“Those regulations will have to meet a cost-benefit analysis for deregulation before they are going to impose any new regulatory burdens.”

Rao is now an associate professor of law at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University where she founded the Center for the Study of the Administrative State.