Senate Hearing: Examining Federal Agency Regulatory Guidance

• •The hearing was held on June 30, 2016, as the second part of an oversight series on agency regulatory guidance.
• •Regulatory guidance is defined as a tool for agencies to interpret statutes and regulations for the public.
• •Guidance documents are exempt from the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) rulemaking requirements, meaning they do not require the same public notice and comment process as formal regulations.
• •Guidance documents are not legally binding in the same way as formal regulations.
• •There is no central repository for federal guidance documents, making it difficult to track their total number or economic impact.
• •Concerns were raised that agencies may use guidance to advance new substantive policies rather than merely clarifying existing ones.
• •Guidance can be changed at the discretion of an agency without formal administrative procedures.

The hearing addresses the legal distinction between informal agency guidance and formal regulations, which determines whether federal agencies can impose new requirements on businesses and the public without following standard public notice and comment procedures.

Patterns POLISCOPE noticed across the record. These are observations to investigate, not conclusions.