Congress

The chairman and ranking member of a Senate governmental affairs committee panel are poised to introduce bills they say will make “surgical fixes” to the regulatory process by creating a test to ensure health and safety rules are effective via future retrospective reviews and providing more opportunity for early input on proposed measures.

House Democrats grilled EPA toxics chief Alexandra Dunn over the agency's narrow approach to addressing risks of asbestos, though Dunn declined comment on a pair of leaked internal memos regional staff wrote raising concerns about the agency's approaches and underscoring concerns raised by environmentalists and others.

A new climate change policy blueprint from a top former Obama EPA official prioritizes a post-2020 push on cap-and-trade legislation for power plants and various industrial sectors over new Clean Air Act regulations, while recommending other administrative and legislative policies for an “ambitious but achievable” agenda.

Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) is stepping up his criticism of the White House regulatory review office over its allegedly unprecedented step of refusing to cooperate with oversight requests from EPA’s Inspector General (IG), which is investigating the office’s role in agency efforts to roll back greenhouse gas limits on so-called glider trucks.