Number: RL34747
Title: Midnight Rulemaking: Considerations for Congress and a New Administration
Authors: Curtis W. Copeland, Specialist in American National Government 
Abstract: As various authors have documented, at the end of every recent presidential administration involving a change in the party controlling the White House, the level of rulemaking activity by federal agencies tends to increase - a phenomenon often referred to as "midnight rulemaking." For example, Jay Cochran of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University reported that, between 1948 and 2001, when the party in control of the White House changed, the number of pages printed in the Federal Register increased an average of 17% during the final three months of an outgoing administration when compared to the number of pages during the same period in non-election years. Susan Dudley, the current administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), wrote in 2001 (while a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center) that the sharp increase in regulatory output at the end of the Clinton Administration was "not an anomaly," and that "sudden bursts of regulatory activity at the end of a presidential administration are systematic, significant, and cut across party lines.
Pages: 14
Date: December 12, 2008