Nominations to White House Regulatory Office
On July 31, 2006, President Bush nominated Dudley to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). <2> Part of the Office of Management and Budget, the OIRA "reviews major agency regulations with an eye toward reducing compliance costs, and according to critics, easing burdens on companies," according to the Wall Street Journal. According to the Journal: <3>
Under Ms. Dudley, Mercatus has been a very active player at OIRA proceedings. Ultimately, 14 of the 23 rules the White House chose for its 2001 "hit list" were Mercatus entries. Ms. Dudley, who had an earlier turn as a staff economist at OIRA and the Environmental Protection Agency, calls herself a "free-market environmentalist," who wants to protect the environment through "market-based incentives."
In April 2007, the Los Angeles Times reported that President Bush "has renominated three people for top jobs affecting the environment who were previously blocked in Congress because of their pro-industry views." Dudley, one of the three, was renominated to head OIRA. "According to industry lobbyists and Republican aides in Congress, Bush intends to skirt the Senate approval process if necessary by making recess appointments to put the three nominees in the posts," reported the Times. <4>
Dudley Argues For Less Information Release on Toxics
In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks Dudley complained that the Environmental Protection Agency had overstated the benefits of the Toxic Release Inventory. She went on to claim that there were national security risks to the disclosure of the information. "Perhaps more importantly, in light of recent events, EPA has not addressed the risks that making chemical risk information broadly available to potential terrorists can pose," she wrote.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Susan_E._Dudley