This comment letter responds to a request from the Environmental Protection Agency for comments on its June 11 proposed rule “Increasing Consistency and Transparency in Considering Benefits and Costs in the Clean Air Act Rulemaking Process” (hereinafter the “Benefit/Cost” rule). The proposed rule focuses on “processes that [EPA] would be required to undertake in promulgating regulations under the Clean Air Act (CAA) to ensure that information regarding the benefits and costs of regulatory
decisions is provided and considered in a consistent and transparent manner.

My name is Benjamin Zycher. I am a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC, and am the senior energy/environment policy specialist there. I formerly was a senior economist at the RAND Corporation, an adjunct professor of economics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and a senior staff economist at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. I hold a doctorate in economics from UCLA and a master’s degree in public policy from the University of California, Berkeley. The views that I express in this letter are my own and do not purport to represent those of any institution with which I am affiliated.

The Environmental Protection Agency has published and solicited public comments on its draft rule reforming the benefit/cost analytic methodology applied to new regulations promulgated under the Clean Air Act (CAA). This topic is exceptionally important. At a general level, such regulations can yield substantial environmental improvement at reasonable costs, or they can impose massive costs upon the economy with little or no environmental benefits in the bargain. At a more specific level, enhanced transparency with respect to the benefit/cost methodology used to determine the reasonableness and appropriateness of proposed rules is crucial to facilitate the public notice and comment process providing crucial feedback to decisionmakers.

With its central focus on clarity and transparency, this draft rule makes a good start in terms of rationalizing an analytic process that can be afflicted with poor analysis and even political and bureaucratic biases intended to support as “appropriate and necessary” the adoption of rules that could not satisfy any honest benefit/cost analysis.