Review – OIRA and the Regulatory Freeze

Since Trump’s regulatory freeze took effect on January 20^th, the OMB’s Office of Information and regulatory affairs (OIRA) has not done much work on its normal job of processing rulemakings and information collection requests. They have almost certainly stayed busy, working with agencies in assessing their actions under that freeze, but their normal business has dropped off considerably.

The table below shows those normal actions that have been processed since January 20^th:

OIRA Actions

We can see from that table that the only thing that has been proceeding with any normality is the receiving of information collection request (ICR) submissions from federal agencies. This is one area that was not addressed in Trump’s regulatory freeze order. Technically, these ICR’s are not supposed to be initiating new policy, but new ICRs and revisions certainly reflect recent changes in the operation of those programs.

 

For more information on the DHS ICR’s currently being reviewed by OIRA, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/oira-and-the-regulatory-freeze - subscription required.