17 Groups Urge Trump Administration to End Unlawful IRS Practice of Dodging Oversight

Washington, D.C. – Cause of Action Institute (“CoA Institute”) today led a coalition of 17 organizations in sending a letter to President Trump and senior administration officials urging them to hold the IRS accountable by working to end the agency’s practice of dodging oversight of its rules.

CoA Institute recently issued an investigative report titled Evading Oversight: The Origins and Implications of the IRS Claim That Its Rules Do Not Have an Economic Impact, detailing how the IRS created and expanded a series of self-bestowed exemptions from three important regulatory oversight mechanisms.  The IRS created these exemptions by claiming that the economic effects of its rules flow from the underlying statute and not its regulatory choices.

The letter states:

This IRS practice denies Congress information about IRS major rules that should be reported to the Government Accountability Office under the Congressional Review Act.  It also hinders the White House’s ability to fulfill its constitutional obligation to supervise the Executive Branch by conducting oversight of IRS regulations pursuant to Executive Order 12,866.  And it impacts the public’s right to learn about and comment on the economic impact of the IRS rules that are subject to the Regulatory Flexibility Act… The IRS should live by the same rules of administrative law and agency oversight as the rest of the Executive Branch.

The letter was sent to President Trump, Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”) Director Mick Mulvaney, and Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (“OIRA”) Administrator Neomi Rao.

The letter urges the Department of the Treasury and OMB to withdraw from a decades-old agreement allowing the IRS to avoid White House review of its rulemakings. Last week, two former heads of OIRA, Susan E. Dudley who served under President George W. Bush and Sally Katzen who served in the Clinton administration, wrote in The Wall Street Journal that this longstanding agreement has been abused and agreed it should be reconsidered.

Further, the coalition letter firmly holds that the IRS should not be permitted to claim that the economic impact of its rules is due to the underlying statute and not its regulatory choices.

The full letter can be found here.

The following groups signed:

American Business Defense Council
Dick Patten, President

American Commitment
Phil Kerpen, President

Americans for Prosperity
Brent Wm. Gardner, Chief Government Affairs Officer

Americans for Tax Reform
Grover Norquist, President

Association of Mature American Citizens
Dan Weber, President & CEO

Campaign for Liberty
Norm Singleton, President

The Carlstrom Group
Bob Carlstrom, President

Cause of Action Institute
John Vecchione, President & CEO

Center for Freedom and Prosperity
Andrew F. Quinlan, President

Council for Citizens Against Government Waste
Tom Schatz, President

Family Business Coalition
Palmer Schoening, Chairman

Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce
Nathan Nascimento, Executive Vice President

FreedomWorks
Jason Pye, Vice President of Legislative Affairs

Hispanic Leadership Fund
Mario H. Lopez, President

National Taxpayers Union
Pete Sepp, President

Taxpayers Protection Alliance
David Williams, President

Tea Party Patriots
Jenny Beth Martin, President

 

For information regarding this press release, please contact Zachary Kurz, Director of Communications at CoA Institute: zachary.kurz@causeofaction.org.

 

Regulation Czar Neomi Rao Discusses Deregulatory Agenda

In his State of the Union address last month, President Donald J. Trump patted himself on the back for the economic boom and the steady drop in unemployment over the past year. Many economists agree that he ought to take some credit, and suggest his deregulatory push has played a role. To discuss the Trump administration’s regulatory achievements, Neomi Rao, the president’s appointee for administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (“OIRA”) last week joined the Federalist Society’s Free Lunch Podcast.

Last year was “a banner year for regulatory reform,” Rao said in the beginning of the podcast.

When Trump took office, he signed Executive Order 13771, ordering agencies to eliminate two regulations for every new regulation added. It also capped the net cost of new regulations to zero dollars. This means that for every new dollar in regulatory costs, one offsetting dollar had to be cut from regulatory costs elsewhere.

Rao said that the administration lived up to Trump’s campaign promise – and then some. For every new regulation added, 22 regulatory actions were cut, which she said far exceeded his promise. Additionally, the net savings for Americans on regulations was $8 billion, also exceeding his promise. The administration also halted 1500 new rules proposed under the previous administration because, Rao said, it wants to analyze the scope and content of all regulations.

But more important than these small changes, according to Rao, the administration is striving to make structural and cultural reform, which would hopefully extend into future administrations. “We want to continue with the momentum from the past year and with the success that we had,” she said.

For example, Rao indicated that agencies must properly follow the Congressional Review Act (“CRA”), which Rao claims requires them to submit proposed regulations to OIRA, so it can determine whether it imposes a cost of $100 million or more. If it does, then OIRA sends the proposed regulation to Congress for approval. Agencies that don’t comply, she said, risk some of their rules losing legitimacy.

As Cause of Action Institute has pointed out over the past year, there are hundreds of rules that are currently vulnerable to be repealed under the CRA that have yet to be received by Congress. For example, last month Cause of Action Institute released an investigative report revealing the IRS has dodged compliance with the CRA and other oversight mechanisms by suggesting that its rules have no economic impact, a suggestion that we have argued is false and intended to shield the agency’s actions from oversight.

Apart from the economic effect of excess regulations, Rao said OIRA is working to make sure the government is more respectful of the separation of powers and more transparent. Because only Congress has the power to make laws, Rao said it can be dangerous to increase the power of the executive branch to the extent that it is making a lot of rule changes. To improve transparency, OIRA will ensure that agencies comply with a federal law that requires they give public notices of new rules and regulations so that the public and stakeholders have an opportunity to voice their support or opposition. Additionally, Rao said OIRA will be working to reduce paperwork for businesses to save them cost and time.

The Trump administration has made progress in the past year to cut regulatory red tape. Hopefully the administration can continue going in this direction with a series of structural changes to scale back the administrative state.

Tyler Arnold is a communications associate at Cause of Action Institute.