Industry groups arc pressing the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to support a draft preliminary EPA rule that would establish greater "consistency" when considering the costs of its regulatory policies, urging OMB to devote resources to the effort and broadly playing down legal obstacles to consideration of costs in future rules. Groups including the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), American Petroleum Institute (API), American Forest and Paper Association (AF&PA) and the American Chemistry Council (ACC) have been meeting with OMB officials in recent weeks to discuss a draft advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPR) that the agency says is intended to remedy past "nontransparent" internal EPA policies on the issue. Industry sources who attended the meetings say they are urging OMB to advance the effort and ensure EPA is aggressive in considering rules' costs when environmental statutes allow. "Our pitch is that. . . there is enough of an issue here that it makes sense as to evaluate whether this process [for considering costs] is working as well as it should for rulemakings, says one source familiar with the meetings.
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