Well-conceived, science-based regulations can help ensure that businesses retain the capacity to innovate while simultaneously promoting the health and welfare of employees, customers and communities. But overlapping, conflicting and poorly executed regulations can, and do, impose substantial costs on the U.S. economy, sometimes with little or no demonstrable benefit. In fact, for the past three years, Business Roundtable CEOs have cited regulatory costs as the number one cost pressure facing their companies.

The members of Business Roundtable believe that it is possible to make the U.S. regulatory system smarter, more efficient and more effective. A smarter regulatory system – one that engages affected parties earlier in the process, improves the quality of information relied upon by federal agencies and better estimates the costs and benefits of potential regulations – will help promote business investment, innovation and job creation.

The Regulatory Accountability Act of 2015, H.R. 185 – introduced by Chairman Bob Goodlatte with Reps. Collin Peterson (joint news release), Lamar Smith, Tom Marino, Pete Sessions and Trent Franks as co-sponsors – would achieve these goals in many important ways. The Act would:

• Facilitate earlier and more meaningful engagement in federal rulemaking, so that affected parties could engage before the agency invests the substantial resources required to write proposed regulations.
• Encourage the use of better quality information so that rules would be based on the best reasonably obtainable information.
• Require that agencies conduct an objective cost-benefit analysis for all rules.
• Oblige all agencies, including so-called independent agencies, to comply with these requirements in consultation with the Office of Management and Budget.

If enacted, the Regulatory Accountability Act  would codify many of the elements necessary to make the U.S. regulatory system smarter – including recommendations for conducting cost-benefit analysis as outlined in the new Business Roundtable primer, Using Cost-Benefit Analysis to Craft Smart Regulation. That’s why Business Roundtable welcomes the introduction of this bipartisan act and urges the House to pass it.