Milestone 1: The Administrative Procedure Act. The Congress established a variety of agencies decades after the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887 which would center in regulating interstate trade, water and power, commodity exchanges, communications, and other areas relevant to the activities. In the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal expanded the jurisdiction of these agencies and added new ones. However, soon the authorities were concerned that the Congress' delegation of legislative powers to the federal agencies were unconstitutional.
After years of debates on unconstitutional delegation, the first regulatory reform bill was created in 1946 or the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The regulations in the APA were grounded in statutory law and an administrative record and it includes public notice-and-comment which serves as a guide in rulemaking.
Milestone 2: Economic Deregulation. With the set guide in rulemaking and APA, there came the wave of deregulation in the 1970s to 1980s. It is shown how the reform bill affected the regulation of economic controls of the United States and it brought a downturn of economic forms with the abolition of numerous agencies.
Milestone 3: Benefit-Cost Analysis. A new type of social regulation began to emerge which aims to protect health, safety, and the environment then a next wave of regulatory reform which focused on ensuring that regulatory benefits outweighed costs. In 1978, Executive Order 12,044 was established by President Jimmy Carter wherein it analyzes the impact of new regulations and minimizing burdens. Subsequently, the Paperwork Reduction Act was signed in 1980 and created the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). Benefit-cost balancing then became the standard practice in most regulatory agencies and is increasingly expected by reviewing courts.
Milestone 4: White House Review. When President Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, he issued Executive Order 12,291 which gave the newly created OIRA a role in reviewing draft regulations. Before allowing to remove or revise an existing regulation, notice-and-comment procedures of the APA are followed by agencies to build a record which they can defend in court and demonstrate that the benefits of the proposed deregulatory actions outweigh the costs.
In addition, the Executive Order 13,771 was issued in 2017 by President Trump and it requires agencies to remove two regulations for every new one issued and to offset the costs of new regulations by removing or modifying existing rules. This order emphasized on reducing regulatory costs reflects a dramatic departure from the focus on net benefits that has prevailed for social regulations.
The adaptation of changes in regulatory policies throughout the years had issues in the delegation of powers, how to have careful planning regarding deregulatory and regulatory actions, and decision-making in order to meet social goals and national objectives. It was stated in the article that the future of regulatory policies in the United States seem of a blur with the continuous shifts for organizations to easily comply. However, numerous groups or organizations such as TCFS can help to meet the compliance standard since the growth of a business and avoiding risks would ensure stability and healthy practice of obeying US laws and regulations. Hence, to make a clear picture of regulatory policies in the future, creating connections with compliance groups and understanding how these milestones of the developments in regulatory policies in the United States would benefit the company.