Regulatory Accountability Act
Analysis under review: This bill has generated analysis that may be too generic or incomplete. Clause-level evidence remains available below.
Summary
This bill fundamentally restructures how federal agencies make regulations. It requires agencies to consider alternatives and pick the one that maximizes net benefits for any rule costing more than $100 million per year. All proposed and final rules must be reviewed by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs before publication. Major rules get longer public comment periods (90 days), a responsive comment period, and an advance notice of proposed rulemaking requirement. The bill also restricts agencies from advocating for or against their own proposed rules during the comment period, requires formal rulemaking hearings for high-impact rules (over $1 billion), elevates judicial review to a more searching standard, creates procedures for agencies to petition for retrospective review of rules, regulates agency guidance documents, and allows new presidential administrations to delay rules from the prior administration for up to 90 days.
Evidence Chain:
This summary is generated from the full bill text using AI analysis. Expand "Detailed Analysis" below for identified beneficiaries/burden bearers.
At a Glance
What This Bill Does
Overhaul federal agency rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act by requiring cost-benefit analysis for major rules, OIRA review of all rules, enhanced public comment periods, mandatory advance notice for major rules, heightened judicial review standards, and restrictions on agency guidance documents.
Who Benefits
- Regulated industries
- Business groups
- OIRA/OMB (expanded authority)
Who Bears Costs
- Federal regulatory agencies
- Public interest and environmental groups that depend on strong regulations
- Consumers who benefit from regulatory protections
Key Policy Areas
{'domain': 'Government Operations', 'evidence': 'Amends APA Section 553 rulemaking procedures'}, {'domain': 'Regulatory Reform', 'evidence': 'Creates new categories of major rules with >100M annual economic effect'}, {'domain': 'Administrative Law', 'evidence': 'Changes judicial review standards under Section 706'}
Primary Purpose
Overhaul federal agency rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act by requiring cost-benefit analysis for major rules, OIRA review of all rules, enhanced public comment periods, mandatory advance notice for major rules, heightened judicial review standards, and restrictions on agency guidance documents.
Policy Domains
Legislative Strategy
"Comprehensive deregulatory reform making it procedurally harder and judicially riskier for agencies to issue new regulations, particularly major ones"
Sponsors
Legislative Progress
In CommitteeMr. Lankford (for himself and Mr. Johnson) introduced the following …
Read twice and referred to the Committee on Homeland Security …
Introduced in Senate
Stakeholder Effects
cui bono?How this legislation distributes effects. Mention counts reflect frequency, not effect magnitude.
Federal judiciary, Federal regulatory agencies, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs
Positive-direction: Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs
Negative-direction: Federal judiciary, Federal regulatory agencies
Regulated businesses and industries, Regulated industries, Regulated industries and trade associations
Bill Structure & Actor Mappings
Who is "The Secretary" in each section?
- "the_administrator"
- → Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs
Key Definitions
Terms defined in this bill
Agency statement of general applicability not intended to have force of law, setting forth policy or interpretation
Guidance likely to lead to annual economic effect, major increase in costs, or significant adverse competitive effects
Rule likely to cause annual effect on economy of 100M+ or major increase in costs/prices or significant adverse competitive effects
Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs
We use a combination of our own taxonomy and classification in addition to large language models to assess meaning and potential beneficiaries. High confidence means strong textual evidence. Always verify with the original bill text.
Learn more about our methodology