Biden Administration Review of Trump Pending Rules

We are now 11 days into the Biden Administration, and it appears that their review of rules pending review by OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) is complete. Agencies have withdrawn 60 pending rulemakings, leaving 10 under consideration by OIRA; see the table below for the list of remaining rulemakings.

2502-ZA37	HUD/OH	Amendments to HUD's Non-Borrowing Spouse Policy for all Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) Loans
2502-ZA36	HUD/OH	Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) Program – Changes to Interest Rate Requirements Including Removal of the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) Index
1018-BE29	DOI/FWS	Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Critical Habitat Designation for the Western Distinct Population Segment of the Yellow-Billed Cuckoo
2120-AK31	DOT/FAA	Pilot Records Database (HR 5900)
2120-ZA26	DOT/FAA	Exception for Limited Recreational Operations of Unmanned Aircraft
1010-AE07	DOI/BOEM	Rescission of Certain Unsolicited Lease Requests and Multiple-Factor Bidding From Renewable Energy Regulations
1006-ZA02	DOI/RB	Business Practice Guidelines for Central Valley Project Improvement Act Receipts, Program Accounting, Cost Allocation and Cost Recovery
1651-AB33	DHS/USCBP	Mandatory Advance Electronic Information for International Mail Shipments
1625-AC48	DHS/USCG	Clarification of Certain Mariner Training Requirements
3209-AA50	OGE	Legal Expense Fund Regulation

None of the rulemakings that were withdrawn have been covered in this blog.

At this point in the Trump Administration 24 rulemakings had been withdrawn, leaving only one to go to completion. The differences in the numbers of withdrawn rulemakings is more a measure of the efficacy of the Obama and Trump administrations in getting rulemakings completed during their tenure than in the intensity of the Trump and Biden administrations in clearing rulemakings from the previous administration.

NOTE: All of the data for this post was derived from search tools on the Reginfo.gov website.

OMB Pauses Rule Processing

As is normal at the start of a new administration, President Biden’s Chief of Staff announced yesterday that the OMB would stop actions on all current rulemakings until they were approved by agency heads appointed by the new President. At the same time, the President appointed acting leadership for 34 agencies, including (of interest in this blog) David Pekoske for DHS and Lana Hurdle for DOT. Additionally, final rules that have been published, but have not yet gone into effect, would have the effective date extended to 60-days from yesterday to allow for further review.

It appears that OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) had unofficially stopped approving rulemakings as of Monday. Through last Friday, OIRA had been approving rulemakings at the rate of five to ten per workday for the last two months. No rulemakings have been approved this week.

OMB is authorized to exempt rulemakings from this review process “for emergency situations or other urgent circumstances relating to health, safety, environmental, financial, or national security matters” {para 1}. Also exempted are rules that are “subject to statutory or judicial deadlines” {para 4}.

We can expect the Biden Administration to start the process of withdrawing rulemakings from OMB’s review with which it does not agree. That process started yesterday with three rulemakings from the State Department and one from the Department of Labor. Again, this is a typical and routine practice. The Obama Administration withdrew 31 rulemakings between their inauguration and February 1^st, 2009 and the Trump Administration withdrew 25 during the similar period in 2017.