MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
President Trump wants to change the way the White House handles government regulations. Keith Romer from our Planet Money podcast has a story about one of Trump's most recent executive orders.
KEITH ROMER, BYLINE: Executive Order 14215 expands the power of a part of the executive branch you may have never even heard of - OIRA, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
SUSAN DUDLEY: If you Google obscure but powerful government agency, OIRA probably will show up on the first page.
ROMER: Susan Dudley ran OIRA under President George W. Bush. She told me one of OIRA's big jobs is to review with a critical eye proposed regulations from different federal agencies, like the Department of Transportation or the EPA or the FDA.
DUDLEY: I joke that OIRA has to kind of wear the black hat and be the one to say, well, let's look at how this works. But it does mean that you're nobody's favorite person.
ROMER: For decades, OIRA has given the White House a way to make sure that new regulations align with the president's agenda. But before this new executive order, there was one part of the government whose rules OIRA did not review - the independent regulatory agencies, places like the Federal Trade Commission, Federal Communications Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission. Corey Frayer worked at the SEC in the Biden administration.
COREY FRAYER: Being an independent agency means that although the leadership of the agency is appointed by the president, they are expected to act at an arm's length from the administration that appointed them.
ROMER: Traditionally, independent agencies have had a lot of freedom. But Frayer says presidents could still influence their policies.
FRAYER: The point of the independence of these agencies is not that a president isn't allowed to have an opinion and not that a president isn't allowed to express that opinion. It is that they don't have a way to enforce that opinion.
ROMER: For Frayer, the expansion of OIRA's powers is worrying.
FRAYER: This is a terrible idea. When you outright state that your intention is to interfere in an agency's independent rulemaking process, that undermines the trust in the marketplace that makes the American financial markets the deepest and most liquid and most attractive in the world.
ROMER: Susan Dudley sees things differently. In fact, in 2018, she cowrote an op-ed with an OIRA administrator from the Clinton years calling for a similar reform to the one in the executive order.
DUDLEY: I think it's fair to say that former OIRA administrators from both sides of the aisle support having independent agencies be covered under the executive order.
ROMER: Dudley is sympathetic to people like Corey Frayer, who worry that the Trump administration is trying to consolidate too much power in the presidency. But to her, this move, at least, makes sense.
DUDLEY: Well, this probably sounds pollyannish, but I think it means that the independent regulatory agencies will do a more thorough analysis, and the regulations will be better.
ROMER: I reached out to the White House for this story and was connected with someone who was only willing to be identified as a senior administration official. This official told me, quote, "no agency is independent. It goes back to the Constitution. The president of the United States is the head of the executive branch."
Keith Romer, NPR News.
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