This is the title of one president Biden’s first day orders and memoranda. The full text is here. I think it portends a full-bore Progressive agenda. It notes that “the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has been charged by Presidents of both parties with reviewing significant executive branch regulatory actions.” It then gives four reasons as to why we need modernization: “a massive global pandemic; a major economic downturn; systemic racial inequality; and the undeniable reality and accelerating threat of climate change.” The first two seem clear. The third derives from Marxist critical race theory. The fourth rests on dubious models promulgated by the U.N. None indicate why the current review process is deficient or antiquated. The proscriptions that follow reveal the motivation.
It directs the OMB and other agencies to suggest “how the regulatory review process can promote public health and safety, economic growth, social welfare, racial justice, environmental stewardship, human dignity, equity, and the interests of future generations.” It asks that the suggestions “reflect new developments in scientific and economic understanding” and that they “take into account the distributional consequences of regulations”. It is hard to imagine a more blatant Progressive mandate.
For Progressives, rest easy, help is on the way. For the rest of us, onerous intervention through the Administrative State is about to be modernized.