Lessening Regulatory Costs and Establishing a Federal Regulatory Budget Act of 2017

This bill requires federal agencies to: (1) designate regulatory reform officers to oversee reduction, cost control, planning, review, and termination of regulatory programs; and (2) establish task forces to recommend, within a five-year period, the repeal or amendment of regulations that eliminate or inhibit jobs, impose costs exceeding benefits, create inconsistency, interfere with regulatory reform, are inconsistent with Paperwork Reduction Act guidelines, were made to implement executive orders or presidential directives subsequently rescinded or modified, or are outdated, unnecessary, or ineffective.

Any new incremental cost of a new significant regulatory action must be offset by the elimination of existing costs associated with at least two prior regulatory actions.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) must set a net amount of incremental costs allowed for each agency in issuing new significant regulatory actions and repealing regulatory actions for the each fiscal year. If an agency does not exhaust all the incremental cost allowance for a fiscal year, that remaining balance may be included in the incremental allowance for the subsequent fiscal year.

Before proposing a significant regulatory action during FY2018, an agency must identify at least two regulatory actions for repeal. Total incremental cost of all such new significant regulatory actions and any repealed regulatory action must be: (1) no greater than zero, or (2) consistent with an OMB waiver.

Agencies must submit an annual regulatory plan to the OMB about: (1) the costs of proposed or finalized regulations, and (2) the economic effects and the net effect on jobs considered when drafting significant regulatory actions.

The bill prohibits issuance of a significant regulatory action if it was not included in the most recent version of the published unified agenda of regulations under development or review, unless it was approved by the OMB.