Trump Order Requires FCC, Other Agencies to Submit Rulemakings for White House Review
President Donald Trump issued an executive order Tuesday afternoon directing the FCC, other “so-called independent” federal agencies and all other executive branch entities to “submit for review all proposed and final significant regulatory actions” to the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) “before publication in the Federal Register.” Trump said “it shall be the policy of the executive branch to ensure Presidential supervision and control of the entire executive branch.” Then-President Bill Clinton's 1993 order that set up OIRA mostly exempted independent agencies but subjected them to some obligations.
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Previous administrations “have allowed so-called ‘independent regulatory agencies’ to operate with minimal Presidential supervision,” Trump’s order said. “These regulatory agencies currently exercise substantial executive authority without sufficient accountability to the President, and through him, to the American people. Moreover, these regulatory agencies have been permitted to promulgate significant regulations without review by the President.” Those “practices undermine such regulatory agencies' accountability to the American people and prevent a unified and coherent execution of Federal law,” the order said. “For the Federal Government to be truly accountable to the American people, officials who wield vast executive power must be supervised and controlled by the people's elected President.”