Issue Spotlight

Here’s some of the issues we’re working on and watching this year:

HHS Takes Action to Promote Safety and Quality in Nursing Homes

On April 11, 2022, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued its Skilled Nursing Facilities Prospective Payment System proposed rule.   If enacted, the rule will help to ensure nursing home residents across the country receive safe, dignified and appropriate care. 

Among other things, this rule will help CMS consider setting minimum staffing requirements at facilities and creating new incentives to reduce staff turnover at nursing homes.  Research shows that lower turnover leads to higher-quality care.  

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NHTSA Finalizes First Occupant Protection
Safety Standards for Vehicles Without Driving Controls

In March 2022, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued its first-ever set of rules regarding passenger safety in automated vehicles.  With self-driving cars already on the road, the rule is an attempt to establish “robust” standards for occupant safety. The rule is just first step. More action will likely be needed in light of manufacturers who are pushing the regulatory boundaries with through a wide-deployment of their self-driving technology throughout the United States.

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Read the rule here

Investing in Carbon Capture and Storage

Climate change is one of the biggest threats facing our country and our world, and energy usage is at the heart of the problem. To fight against it, we will need to employ every possible solution we have: investing in renewable energy sources, switching to electric vehicles, conserving energy, and removing carbon from our atmosphere after it is expelled from factories and production plants. 

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), the process of taking carbon dioxide out of our atmosphere and burying it deep underground, will play a critical role in combating climate change. In an ideal world, we could make every industry carbon free and prevent it from ever entering the atmosphere, but we have too many essential industries in our country where we cannot realistically eliminate carbon emissions in the near future. Called “heavy industries” such as steel, chemicals, fertilizer, and cement, these industries are uniquely challenging to decarbonize because they require high-temperature heat for production and chemical reactions that result in harmful emissions. The cost to decarbonize these industries is extremely high and the technology is simply not there yet. CCS gives us the unique opportunity to reduce environmental harm from these industries while we work towards decarbonizing them in the future.

Recently, the Biden Administration announced nearly $2.5 billion for the U.S. Department of Energy to kickstart our country’s carbon dioxide management and removal industry. Removing carbon from the atmosphere is one thing, but it will not reduce environmental harm unless we have somewhere to store it. We need to invest in specific capture and removal projects to store the carbon dioxide underground.

There is also work to do when it comes to the basic processes of approving CCS projects and granting states primacy to oversee their own projects. This can delay new projects for years, dragging them through bureaucratic gridlock. The federal government must speed up the approvals processes for new projects and state primacy so they can actually start working.

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Protecting Americans from credit card regulations that undermine the free market and consumer choice

Thirteen years ago, Congress passed a last-minute policy that added unnecessary regulations to debit cards. The goal was to reduce the “interchange fees” that retailers pay to process electronic payments, but the result was higher banking fees, far fewer debit card rewards program and no lower prices at stores for consumers or choice in how their transactions were processed. This added up to a $22-25 billion loss for everyday Americans.

Now, Congress is trying to do the same thing with credit cards. The new bill, the Credit Card Competition Act, represents government reaching too far. Instead of letting consumers and the marketplace dictate which payment networks process credit card transactions, the bill forces banks to open up credit cards to at least 2 “unaffiliated” networks. Consumers will no longer have control over which payment network processes their credit card transactions, putting their data and security at risk on less secure networks. 

This bill will also trigger billion-dollar interchange revenue losses for banks of all sizes, slashing the funds used for fraud protection, payment security innovation, free credit cards, and credit cards rewards programs like cash back and travel miles. American consumers stand to lose $40 to $50 billion per year from this.

Better-Regulation.org calls on Congress to stay out of micromanaging credit cards and to oppose legislation that could do more harm than good.

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To Protect American Jobs, Healthcare and the Economy, the EPA Must Use Sound Science to Evaluate Formaldehyde

To protect Americans’ jobs, the economy, and healthcare, the EPA must follow the science to regulate formaldehyde. The EPA’s risk assessment, which could recommend exposure standards below what even the human body produces, would set off a chain reaction that could disrupt nearly a million American jobs and $500 billion worth of economic output on auto manufacturing, construction materials, medical devices and more. 
 
Even though decades of peer reviewed research maintain that the current regulatory limit on formaldehyde exposure levels are safe, the EPA has hinted that they will go well beyond what even officials at the World Health Organization and European Union said are safe levels of formaldehyde. The EPA must follow the science as it evaluates formaldehyde’s risk.

Protecting Broadband Achievements

Thanks to President Biden’s leadership, Congress passed the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) in 2021. The bill included $65 billion in funding for efforts to close the digital divide, including improving both access and affordability of broadband. Taken together, the programs in the IIJA represent an unprecedented government investment in broadband, and demonstrate the administration’s dedication to closing the digital divide. 
 
Unfortunately, overly burdensome regulations risk derailing this accomplishment and undermining one of the President’s signature achievements. Over the last few years,  bureaucrats at the FCC, the NTIA and the Department of Commerce have overreached when it comes to broadband regulation. This overregulation threatens to deter investment in broadband, and will have the greatest impact on communities on the margins, including Black, brown, low-income and rural communities. We’re fighting to protect the President’s investment in broadband, and push back against overly burdensome regulations that risk undermining it. 

PAID FOR BY BETTER REGULATION