President Obama's Regulatory Czar
Cass Sunstein has served as President Obama's regulatory czar and discusses his service in this position in a book he wrote regarding the future of government. In his book, Sunstein provides considerable insights regarding how he assisted in simplifying bureaucracy resulting in increased cost-effectiveness and realization of improved outcomes. The cost-effectiveness is evident in that he helped save the country $91 billion and improved outcomes is associated with healthier and longer lives for Americans. Despite his remarkable achievements, Cass Sunstein left the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in 2012. While Sunstein's helped in the implementation of several policies, there are additional policies that can be implemented to help in further simplification of this leviathan of a government.
Sunstein's Work
One of the major issues that have characterized President Obama's administration in the past four years is regulations, which is one of the most controversial issues or topics in Washington, DC. Actually, conservatives and industry groups have accused the president for developing and enacting many regulations including rules for Wall Street, rules for automobiles, and rules for coal plants. In contrast, progressive groups argue that while President Obama is coming up with many regulations, the White House is relatively slow in developing many significant regulations that could enhance health and safety (Plumer, 2013).
One of the major things Cass Sunstein accomplished during his stint as President Obama's regulatory czar was ensuring improved openness and transparency in light of how agencies considered public comments. This process of improvement was characterized with substantial upgrading of regulations.gov through which people can see proposed regulations. Secondly, Sunstein embarked on an increasingly disciplined assessment of the...
In this case, his focus was to lessen the costs of rules while increasing their net benefits, particularly during economically difficult times.
Cass Sunstein's provides several examples of how he accomplished these objectives in his book, Simpler: The Future of Government. Notably, these objectives were based on the premise that the government has effectively promoted interagency coordination and consultation and careful assessment of costs and benefits, which has been a long-term aspect of regulation for several years. He also recognizes that the implementation of regulatory is significantly affected by complexity, which is a major problem in the way the government has been operating. The complexity was characterized by accumulating paperwork burdens without significant efforts toward large-scale reduction. Generally, Sunstein helped in ensuring that the net benefits of rules outweighed costs despite increased criticisms that the government was coming up with too many costly rules.
Further Simplification
As the current regulatory czar for the President, I would implement additional policies or measures to make this leviathan of a government even simpler by looking at something Sunstein did not do. The need for further simplification is fueled by the need for government itself to get simpler in order to be more effective and beneficial to people. The need for a much simpler government is also brought by the increasing complexity of the world including the public sector (Sunstein, 2013, p.209).
The main area I will focus on in order to achieve this objective is prioritizing and implementing measures that will contribute to significant measurable financial savings and reductions in paperwork burdens in a manner that is consistent with the 1995 Paperwork Reduction Act. This is a significant…
