# Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs The **Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA)** is the small office inside the [[Office of Management and Budget]] that serves as the White House's central gatekeeper for federal regulation. The [[Paperwork Reduction Act]] of 1980 created it. Its power over rules comes from executive orders, chiefly Reagan's EO 12291 (1981) and Clinton's EO 12866 (1993), which is still the core. OIRA reviews every "significant" proposed and final rule before publication, checking the cost-benefit analysis, consistency with presidential priorities and interagency conflicts. An economically significant rule clears OIRA twice, so the office can slow, reshape or quietly kill agency rulemaking without any public vote. ## Its other jobs - **Paperwork clearance.** Every federal information collection, from a tax form to a census question, needs an OMB control number. That is why OIRA is the one real veto point on the census form ([[How a Census Question Is Added or Removed]]). - **Statistical policy.** The [[Chief Statistician of the United States]] and the Statistical Policy Branch sit inside OIRA. - **The analytical rules.** Circular A-4 sets how agencies count costs and benefits, including the discount rate ([[Discount Rates as Policy Choices]]). ## 2025–2026: the chokepoint turned into a switch - **Reach.** Executive Order 14215 (February 18, 2025) extended OIRA review to the "independent" agencies for the first time: the SEC, FCC, FTC, NRC and others. Rules that had bypassed the White House for decades now clear it. - **Direction.** The January 2025 deregulation order set a ten-for-one repeal target. It made OIRA an office that counts repeals rather than one that checks new rules. - **Method.** In March 2025 OMB rescinded the Biden administration's 2023 Circular A-4 and reinstated the 2003 version. That restored higher discount rates, which shrink the present value of long-horizon benefits like climate and health. - **Leadership.** Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department official at the center of the 2020 election-reversal effort, ran OIRA as acting administrator from March 5, 2025 until his acting time under the [[Federal Vacancies Reform Act]] ran out on March 4, 2026. Since then [[Mark Paoletta]], OMB's general counsel, has performed the administrator's duties. No one has been confirmed. The pattern matches the rest of the vault's administrative-state findings. The office built to impose discipline on rulemaking has become the office that lets the President direct rulemaking, including at agencies Congress designed to be independent. No statute was changed to make that happen. ## See also - [[Office of Management and Budget]] · [[Russell Vought]] · [[Mark Paoletta]] - [[APA Notice-and-Comment Rulemaking]] · [[Congressional Review Act]] · [[Administrative State]] - [[Paperwork Reduction Act]] · [[Chief Statistician of the United States]] · [[Federal Agencies Hub]] - [[The Value of a Statistical Life]] — the dollar figure regulatory analysis assigns to mortality risk reduction, and what happens when it is set to zero