Sponsors
Introduced May 20, 2025 by Beth Van Duyne · Last progress May 20, 2025
The bill increases transparency, analytic rigor, and legal clarity for major federal rules, but it centralizes OIRA authority and adds procedural requirements that are likely to slow rulemaking, limit judicial remedies, and constrain agencies' ability to consider broader public‑interest benefits.
Taxpayers, state and local governments, regulated entities, and the public will get clearer, centralized, and more transparent rulemaking information because the bill standardizes definitions, lengthens comment periods, centralizes publication of major-rule assessments, requires OIRA reports, and directs courts to review fuller records.
Federal agencies and regulated parties will face stronger analytic standards and oversight—OIRA authority to identify costly/novel rules plus mandatory cost–benefit and risk analyses, timetables, and post‑implementation assessments—which should produce better‑justified rules and help prevent unexpected economic harms.
Courts, agencies, and regulated entities will have clearer judicial-review standards because courts will review the full administrative record, decide legal questions de novo (unless statute says otherwise), and the bill clarifies the 'substantial evidence' standard, promoting more consistent legal outcomes.
Taxpayers, small businesses, and state/local governments will face slower rulemaking and higher administrative costs because OIRA gains power to label rules, a high economic threshold will pull many rules into intensive review, and new procedural and analytic requirements plus centralized assessments will create delays.
Individuals, businesses, and subnational governments will have reduced ability to obtain judicial relief because the bill limits judicial review and narrows available remedies for many agency actions, making it harder to challenge unlawful or harmful rules.
Low-income communities and other beneficiaries of broad public-interest policies may lose out because the bill directs agencies to maximize net benefits within narrow statutory scopes, which constrains consideration of broader social, environmental, or equity benefits.
Based on analysis of 9 sections of legislative text.
Rewrites parts of the Administrative Procedure Act to add definitions, require alternatives and cost/benefit analysis for major rules, expand OIRA oversight, and change judicial review rules.
Changes how federal agencies make rules by adding new definitions, new procedural steps, and more centralized oversight. It requires agencies to identify authority, consider alternatives (with a presumption of at least three), analyze costs and benefits for major rules, and send proposed rules to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) for review before publication. The bill also tightens judicial review standards, defines “substantial evidence,” preserves existing copyrights, and makes technical cross-reference fixes across federal statutes. The amendments apply prospectively (they do not affect rulemakings already pending or completed at enactment). OIRA must publish assessment frameworks and results for major rules, report annually to Congress, and may seek corrections from agencies; courts face new limits and instructions when reviewing agency actions and OIRA actions are largely shielded from judicial review.