Biden’s Fall 2024 Unified Agenda of regulations: The numbers, trends, and what’s next

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The Biden administration's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) dropped the Fall 2024 Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions this past weekend.

The Agenda, a biannual publication since the 1980s, includes 3,331 rulemaking priorities and deeds at various stages of the pipeline-work-in-process, upcoming plans, and the recently finalized. It's useful for congressional oversight were it to be deployed that way.

The Agenda has never been a comprehensive inventory of all federal rules (in fact there have already been 3,059 rules finalized so far in 2024), and the "deregulatory" aspect of its title is less aspirational than merely for looks. This is particularly evident since President Biden's Executive Order 14,094 downplayed traditional cost-benefit scrutiny that already had more potholes than solid surface.

Even as a change in administration looms, the Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency, in their respective preambles, showcase the interventions Biden calls equity and environmental justice, clinging to progressive aims subject to reversal in a matter of weeks in the incoming Trump administration.

The Fall 2024 Agenda reports 2,233 active rules, 453 completed actions, and 645 long-term priorities, as I detail in a breakdown at Forbes. Active rules (consisting of those at the pre-rule, proposed, and final stages) decreased from 2,361 in Spring, while completed actions dropped significantly from 689 to 453. These shifts could reflect strategic moves to protect late-term rules from the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which allows the new GOP Congress and administration to nullify certain recently finalized Biden regulations (I took a look at these in the wake of the Spring agenda).

Of particular interest right now are "major" rules the CRA defines as having yearly economic impacts reaching $100 million (and/or a few others select features).

What matters for those aiming to overturn Biden administration rules is the sharp increase in completed major rules: 146 in total across the Spring and Fall 2024 Agendas, compared to 91 in 2023. Among these, some rules from the Spring Agenda and the 49 completed major rules in the Fall Agenda may be especially vulnerable to CRA challenges by the 119th Congress and the incoming administration. That's not even counting a broader set of 114 "other significant" rules completed in the Fall Agenda.

The Federal Register's page count hit 101,836 today, surpassing the 2016 Obama-era record of 95,894 pages. This marks a striking escalation in regulatory intensity even as the total number of rules continues to hover around 3,000 annually. Regulators know they have more than one way to skin cats than with the traditional blades of notice and comment rules.

With the 119th Congress and a new administration set to take over, the CRA could be instrumental in reversing many rules, much like during the first Trump administration. But achieving lasting reforms will require confronting broader issues: the regulatory effects of federal spending, subsidies, and contracting, as well as guidance documents and other agency sub-regulatory actions.

Using the Agenda to prepare a glide path for rule rollback is just the start.

For more:

"White House Releases Fall 2024 Unified Agenda Of Federal Regulatory And Deregulatory Actions," Forbes

"A Glide Path For Overturning Biden Regulations In The 119th Congress," Forbes