Trump Administration Report Disproves Trump Administration on Regulations
View on WYPR website"Richard Morgenstern is a former director of EPA’s Office of Policy Analysis and also an economist. He issued a caution: in the fine print of the new Trump Administration report is language suggesting that the administration will start refusing to accept key scientific studies used to estimate the value of saved lives.
Because of these changes, in next year’s report, the value of environmental regulations will likely be lower, Morgenstern suggested, not because their impact on human health is lower, but because the Trump Administration is quietly tweaking the accounting methods. The administration is proposing to exclude any medical studies whose private data about individual patients are not made publicly available to corporate attorneys suing to challenge the regulations, Morgenstern said.
'It appears as if the Trump Administration is going to introduce some new methods of calculating benefits, and potentially costs, which will have the effect of lowering the benefits, and raising the costs,' Morgenstern said. 'So essentially, they are changing the math as much as they are changing the regulations.'"
