House Budget Committee Republicans stepped up pressure Monday on the White House to provide details on implementing a law aimed at offsetting the budgetary costs of administrative rules and regulations, which they say have run into the trillions. dollars during President Joe Biden’s first term.
In a letter to White House Budget Director Shalanda Young, House Budget Chairman Jodey C. Arrington of Texas and Jack Bergman of Michigan, the chairman of the panel’s oversight task force, said they have “serious concerns” about the Office of Management and Budget’s 2023 requirement.
The “administrative payment” provision of the 2023 debt limit law requires federal agencies to propose spending cuts or other payments to offset “economically significant” or “significant” rules or regulations that would cost $1 billion or more. over a decade and $100 million or more annually. But the exemptions built into the law so far have made the provision essentially toothless.
Arrington and Bergman wrote to Young that the Biden administration has proposed or already implemented executive actions that could cost more than $2 trillion over a decade, according to an informal budget count that Republicans updated Friday.
Among the most expensive is a 2021 revision of the Department of Agriculture’s formula that determines Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits. That overhaul led to a 23 percent increase and added about $300 billion to food stamp costs over a decade.
Pandemic-era pauses in student loan payments and other initiatives to forgive student debt cost hundreds of billions of dollars, according to the committee. Another costly regulation tightens vehicle emissions standards.
The GOP letter seeks details on how many rules since Biden took office would qualify for the administrative pay requirement, how many have received waivers from OMB and the estimated cost of each pay-as-you-go rule. was waived.
“As our nation faces an unprecedented and ever-growing debt crisis, it is imperative to offset the costs of administrative rules,” the letter says. The letter expresses concern that “OMB is effectively ignoring” the requirement.
As described in a November 2023 report from the Government Accountability Office, OMB said that of the 28 major rules that were finalized between June 3, 2023 and November 3, 2023, only two were costly enough to qualify for administrative pay. to go.
OMB waived the offset requirement for those two rules, the Bidens’ July 2023 income-based student loan repayment plan and a November Health and Human Services rule that updated care reimbursements Medicare home health care, citing the law’s waiver authority if a rule is necessary for the “effective delivery of the program” or “delivery of essential services.” The law does not require any further explanation of these exemptions.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that changes to income-based student loan repayments alone cost more than $260 billion over a decade.
In January, Republicans on the House Budget Committee wrote to the GAO that the agency’s report on administrative pay “raises concerns about whether the provision is being implemented effectively and as intended.”
Arrington and Bergman requested that the GAO produce a supplemental report, which they said they would use in “fiscal oversight duties.”
Although the compensation provision requires agencies to propose compensation under certain circumstances, OMB says in its formal guidance that even if agencies propose compensation, they are not required to implement it.
That’s not sitting well with Republicans on the House Budget Committee, who argue it runs counter to the intent of the law and similar provisions in previous laws. Arrington and Bergman wrote that previous administrations defined the payback rule as a “budget neutrality requirement” on agency actions that increase mandatory or automatic spending.
They said OMB’s interpretation “exhibits complete and utter disagreement with the provision and is very different from previous iterations that enacted the measure’s intent to promote a neutral budget policy.”
The policy of offsetting the cost of administrative actions dates back to the administration of former President George W. Bush, and continued in various forms under his next two successors. Biden rolled back former President Donald Trump’s pay rule and other initiatives of the previous administration as one of his first acts.
The pay-as-you-go policy always had loopholes, and records are spotty on how it was used. But according to a 2011 GAO report, USDA administrative actions during the Bush administration resulted in net savings of $244 million between FY 2006 and FY 2015.
The pay requirement expires after Dec. 31, 2024. But a future president could unilaterally reinstate it.
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