Government is not business, and has neither an expectation nor requirement to operate in a financially "efficient" manner. The mandate of government is to provide protections and services regardless of cost. Furthermore, all expenditures by the Federal government are accrued as a net gain by the private sector as public funds are spent to pay wages, or to purchase goods and services. Fiscal efficiency in government acts as a brake on economic growth, and should thus be avoided.

The Union of Concerned Scientists argues persuasively that this bill is designed to allow Congress to hamstring environmental and health protections. http://blog.ucsusa.org/celia-wexler/beware-of-this-zombie-bill-777?

Although the language of Congress's justification in this proposal is intentionally designed to make any opposition seem unreasonable (I can already hear it: "how could you vote against... SHOULDN'T the public be entitled to understand how their tax $ is spent???) the reality is that this bill is wholly unhelpful. Here's why: 1. This is largely duplicative (most significant regulations are already subject to notice and comment procedures for public input; regulations already present a reg. evaluation that looks at everything from costs to benefits; and technical issues the public isn't skilled enough technically in most cases to understand so agencies explain them in the reg. eval); 2. This is just another attempt to deny the agency expertise that has been developed by executive branch agencies over time regardless of who was in power; 3. There is no question that underperforming regulatory processes or regulatory processes that aren't working out as intended ought to be addressed to correct problems before creating new regulations from wholecloth--but this is what ordinarily happens anyway since fed. employees have no incentive to make their own work harder; and 4. this is just one more attempt to devalue the federal scale regulations, which is against the interests of businesses nationwide since there is nothing worse for a business than the unpredictability of rules varying from state to state. This bill is couched in terminology that suggests everyone should be "on board," but the reality is it is a veiled power grab from Federal agencies and does not add to the process; it only delegitimizes the role of federal oversight, which is often key to consistency of rules nationwide to prevent conflicting compliance regimes from state to state.