Transcripts For CSPAN3 Telecommunications Policy Conference Part 1 20170609

Of the Free State Foundation and im pleased to welcome you to the Free State Foundations ninth annual Telecom President obama conferenc conference. I want to extend a welcome to our cspan audience. Im a selfconfessed cspan junky. My mom, may she rest in peace she always worried when i was a cspan junky, not really knowing what i meant by that. But im always pleased and grateful when cspan is here and welcome to the cspan audience. This years annual Conference Follows on the heels of the 10th Anniversary Gala last december, so with next years annual conference will be in double digits for this event, too. Which just confirms the old adage that time flies when youre having fun and i might add when youre busy as well. Almost every year, i say some of you know this, i say that youre annual Telecom Policy conference just keeps getting bigger, better, and more impactful. Well, as long as it remains true, im going to deep saying it. Even though we had to reschedule this years conference because our first date, march 14th, happened to be the only snowy day this winter in washington, i think this years conference upholds the tradition. A quick glance at the Program Shows why the conference is a mustattend event for anyone interested in communications, internet and hightech law and policy. The program that you have here, its also on our website, if you need another copy or want to download it near the the top of home page. The theme for this years conference is a new direction for communications policy. Less regulation, more investment and innovation. With a new fcc, and a new congress in place, the opportunity is ripe for charting a free market oriented direction for communications, laws and policy. As most of you know, at the fcc under the leadership of new chairman who will be with us of course for our lunch session today, the agency is already charting a new free market oriented direction. Well be spending a lot of time today of course talking about the implications of this new course. Including what it means for innovation and investment. But most importantly, what it means for our nations consumers. I have a hunch that at one time or another today the subject of the fccs new Net Neutrality proceeding or open internet proceeding as the previous fcc chairman preferred or restoring internet for freedom, as the current fcc charm prefers. By whatever name you want to call it, it is an important proceeding for the fcc. Aside from the conversation that i am going to have with fcc chairman at lunchtime, we have a stelar lineup for todays program. The First Program will feature Howard Shelanski and boyden gray here. Then we are going to follow this session with an allpanel lineup. And then immediately following the panel session, we are going to break for a short time for a very nice buffet lunch. I guarantee you, it is going to be nice but i hope most of you are here for the program and not just the lunch. We are honored to have the two acting directors of the trade commission for the after lunch session. They will be featured at that session and then winding up, michelle konl michelle conelly who is a professor at duke university, will offer some final thoughts. Now, remember to tweet if you are a tweeter, the handle i think we have the twitter handle on each table. But it is fsfconf 9. Which should call to mind fsf conference nine. And before we get started, i want to take a second to acknowledge and thank some of our Staff Members that are here. Kathy baker is our events coordinate and communication coordinator. And so she has an awful lot to do with this event and we appreciate her. Lets give a round of applause if we could for kathy. [ applause ] and then i want to acknowledge the scholarly work by two of our Staff Members that are here and their contribution, senior fellow seth cooper. Seth is going to be moderating the conference after lunch and their work is very important. And finally, i want to introduce to you our newest senior fellow, ted bellema. He joined us in in march. He is a ph. D. Economist and a lawyer. And really combines the law and economic expertise. So ted, if you could stand up so people can see who you are. [ applause ] so thanks to all of them and then finally, i want to thank as i often do but sometimes forget to do, my wife laurie she does an awful lot of work for the foundation. When i say that, i am not referring to what she does tolerating without too much grumbling, the often insane hours that i put in for the Free State Foundation. So i appreciate everything that laurie does. And maybe you can thank her with me. [ applause ] okay. With that, lets get started with our first session. And im just going to introduce our speakers first with their indulgence and yours too, i am going to hit some of the highlights that are in their bio. But i refer you to the more complete bios that are in the brochure. Our keynoter for the day is Howard Shelanski. He is a professor of law at Georgetown University law school and a partner as well as the Davis Polk Law Firm and importantly for our purposes today of course, he is the former administrator in president Obamas Administration in the office of information and Regulatory Affairs which is within the office of management and budget. And that position is referred to the regulatory czar. I am not sure if howard likes to be a czar or not. But thats the fact. And howard, again, just briefly, he is a former director of the ftcs bureau of economics and he also served previously as chief economist of the fcc from 1999 to 2000. And a senior economist for the president counsel for economic adviser during president Clinton Administration and howard as well as ted have both degrees in ph. D. In economics and also a law degree. By the way, the topic of this session, and you will see how howard and the next speaker i am going to introduce have the experience and expertise to talk about it is Lessons Learned, improving regulation in government administration. So it is hard to find someone more qualify than howard to talk about that. Along with boyden gray who is going to be the commenter, reactor to howards comments after howard delivers opening remarks. Now, c. Boyden gray is the founding ambassador. Also very pertinent to our program, today he was counsel back in the first bush administratio administration,. He can fill us in on what this is. Someone told me once that when i had another ambassador on our program, we have had a few that once you are an ambassador, that that title never leaves you. That you are always ambassador. So if i forget, boyden is a long time friend of mine, so if i forget to refer you as ambassador, i request your indulgence. It is left off the official bio, but what i think is the most important position that he health during his illustrious career is the former chair of the section of Administrative Law and regulatory practice of the aba. And that might not strike you as being important as the ambassador of the eu. I am a former chair of that section as well, of the aba. So i consider that to be important. And boyden, when i was serving my year, just a one year deal, when i was serving my year as head of the section of Administrative Law, i was asked if i could be ambassador of the eu at that time. And because i had that other job, i had to decline that. I wasnt able to do it. But anyway, now you know about his other position. So with that introduction, i am going to turn it over to howard to get us started and then we will get boydens reactions. Thanks very much. It is an honor to be here and share the podium with boyden who is in some ways a founder of Regulatory Reform and anybody who has worked in my position at oira has served a pantion of people. What i want to talk about today is regulatory process and Regulatory Reform. And i think there are some Lessons Learned, at least, that i learned over the last four years of the Obama Administration doing regulatory review. Why we need to be careful when we embark upon a series of fixes through legislation or other kinds of means. Because there are good things in our regulatory system. There are things that could use fixing. And fixing them is hard. And we want to proceed very carefully and that is an Important Message to get across right now that there is a lot of fairly radical rethinking of the federal governments regulatory program. I tend to think radical rethinkings are good things because they stir things up and get people thinking. And as long as people think with a cool skmhead and willing to tk that some things are wrong, back up. So i would start with the premise that the United States has probably the best most transparent and most accountable system of regulatory process in the worlds. One of the jobs i had as administrator was to go around the world with our ambassador, and to negotiate with foreign governments or entities on Regulatory Reform issues. And one of the things that made that difficult was that many places regulation happens completely out of a black box. There is some kind of summary of a rule or some kind of description of attempt to regulate. Some type of preliminary report. And then boom regulation pops out of some back room and there are few basis in which someone can challenge that rule. There are a few exceptions but by and large an agency has to issue a proposed rule. That proposed rule has to go out for Public Notice and comment. The agency has to issue a final rule that is built upon the record and the response the agency makes to the comments and at the end of it all the agency is subject to judicial review. This works fairly well. Lots of rules get challenged in court and remanded and struck down in court. If you think of the incentives that it generates down the stream, one can see that it is not a bad system. The public is involved early on and the public has a chance to call the agency to account at the end. That is rare. What the public gets to comment on is the rule. What the public gets to see in support of that rule especially if it is an economically significant vule the regulatory impact. Not a white paper describing what some people think the effects might be, but the analysis. Things that can get challenged and brought before a court. So one wants to think twice before one backs up and fundamentally changes a stmg that even if it is not perfect or costless a system of transparency and accountability built into it. It is a rare type of thing. Now let me back up and talk about things that i think are Lessons Learned and lessons of what we might need to fix in regulation and what we might do to come up with a better regulatory system going forward. So what is the job of a Regulatory Review Office. So the first is to identify a real problem. This may sound like a obvious statement, but it is not always the case that regulations that agencies issue address problems that are genuine, that is to say occurring or very likely to occur. Sometimes one sees regulation that is well meant to get ahead of a problem, to stop it before it starts. But without sufficient grounding to be sure that the problem is actually going to occur. That is a Weak Foundation on which to do regulation because then the benefits which as i will talk about in a minute, are always a difficult thing to make salient and to prove become even harder because not only are the benefits hard to examine because they are in the future, they are highly contingent on the problem occurring. And it is hard to make a case for regulation and hard for parties to make a cost for that regulation when the regulations to begin with are the benefits of a regulation actually occurring. So having a convincing case that this is what society should solve is the first issue. Sometime there is is insufficient attention to making that case. Agencies could do a better job making that case. Its not typically what agencies are set up to do. They look at their statutory authorization. They look at some event that has happened out there and they respond. The communications aspect of explaining what they are doing and why they are doing it is not done very well. Sometimes that is because it is a hard case to make. That is all the more reason the agency should have to go out there and make the case. Or the problem is one that is too costly to solve. So identifying a real problem and communicating and making that case convincingly is the first step in rule making. The next step is to identify potential Effective Solutions to that problem. And i Say Solutions because again, another shortcoming that i find even within our overall quite good regulatory system is agencies move quickly towards a solution towards a problem. One of the things that i found as administration of oria is that many proposed rules on significant issues that came in the Office Without examination of regulatory alternatives beyond the proposal. Discuss them and even analyzing them in a rigorous way, they show the public when the rule goes out for comment. And what else might be a possible approach. What are the other things the agency has thought about or rejected or become less convinced of appropriate solutions to the problem. Different alternatives will have different cost benefit profiles. Different alternatives will elicit different data and comments from the public. And the agency may find out something that they inside their sort of closed circle of people working on the rule, they may find there is information that convinces them they made a mistake. They should go back to the drawing board. So identifying potential Effective Solutions to the problem. And even if the Agency Proposes one of those to be transparent and discusses in explaining what alternatives there might be. This is in the executive orders. They have been there, i can throw out a numbers. Executive 12866. 13610. All of these that since president reagan every administration has seen fit to reiterate and strengthen on similar principles on regulatory review some of alternatives are a big one and the third thing that i am going to identify is in some cases controversial. And that is that proposed Solutions Alternatives offered up as possible rules down the road, should not impose cost that outweigh the benefits of solving the problem. Now that sounds obvious. Why would we under take a rule that is more costly than the benefit it brings. This is a fraught exercise. Now the executive orders do not say and i think they are right not to say that the quantified benefits of a rule must exceed the quantified cost of the rule and one of the biggest mistakes that can be made in Regulatory Reform is to issue a mandate. That would be a disaster for a number of reasons. First of all, there are rules that this society chooses to put in place that have nonquantifiable benefits. Distributional objectives. Fairness objectives. Objectives of social inclusiveness. One may agree or disagree politically with those objectives but if they are disclosed, if they are rwell achieved by the rule and the rule says part of the reason we are going to achieve these costs is that same sex families in the military can have access to safe housing, how do you put a dollar on that. It is a dignitary interest. There is not a quantifiable benefit unless you stretch and do a not credible quantitification. There is an immediate quantifiable cost. So the executive orders talk about approximate benefits that justify the cost of a rule. That is squishy, i will admit it, but i think it is important to be a bit squishy because i think it allows society to make decisions that it is going to have regulation that are going to have benefits that are quantifiable. We as a society want to pay for those things. That said, i do think it is important that the public know very clearly what it is paying to get those kinds of benefits. So the disclose sure of costs that can be quantified or identified even if not well quantified that are going to be incurred in the pursuit of those benefits have to be put out there clearly and transparently. Agencies hate to disclose costs and love to tout benefits. One of the jobs of a Regulatory Review Office is to right that balance. I think we are going to see interesting things happen under president trumps executive orders. If one has to repeal two rules to issue a new rule. We are going to see the agencies flipping on cost and benefits as they come forward urging repeal of certain rules. To repeal a rule, you have to make a rule. Under the administrative procedure act you cant say never mind, we are not doing that anymore. Once the rule is out there in published it is a change that you have to do on a full apa process. That means you have got to explain why your previous record was wrong and why facts and evidence today suggest repealing the rules. The things that were the benefits of the rule that was originally passed are now going to be the cost of repeal and one saw this highlighted very well in an exchange on fox news between Chris Wallace and administrator pruitt. Chris wallace said what are you going to do about the 90,000 cases of asthma that those rules are preventing. Now that was an interesting question to ask. Because if you are going to repeal the rules, there is a cost to society. So my bet is agencies are going to come around and say oh, those rules were not so beneficial but they were costly. The opposite of what agencies do. One again needs a truth teller in office that is going to rigorously review those analysis and quantitifications. There are incentives for agencies. So independent review office is important. I think the office that we have in place does a good job. The ability of courts to review the record is yet another backstop. How much farther does one want to go in imposing cost benefit requirements or mandatory layers of review of those rules is i think a hard question. And i worry about some Regulatory Reform efforts that say well, make a oria reviews mandatory to the agencies in every case with cost benefit analysis and make shows reviews judicially reformable. Well you are going to get collusion. Not to make better rules but to make the rules as judgment proof as possible. One wants a separation between the Regulatory Review Office. One and call out the agency for the problems and mistakes it makes. Anything that you would make any of those will eliminate those communications and i fear put the review office into more of a cluessive post your. So another area where one wants to be careful about reforming regulatory review. I want to come back and talk about cost and benefits and then return to a couple of examples that i think highlight some of the challenges we face in regulation. The political dynamics of regulation are always fraught. They are difficult because inherently the political economy of regulation is unbalanced. Cost tends to fall on a narrowly defined set of parties. They tend to be relatively shortterm in occurrence. Relatively measurable. And so any time there is a rule, the people who are going to have to pay for that rule, they know they are going to have to pay for it. They have a good idea of what they are going to pay and they are often not the parties who are directsly going to receive the benefits. If the party that is causing the cost, they should pay for them whether they get the benefits or not. That is not the most common situation in the world. Often the parties that have to fix the problem are fixing a problem that is more social in nature or that is one where they are simply the least cost avoider even if they are not the cost causer and there it is a harder case and one needs to think broadly about justifying those costs. But the point is, there is a strong and vocal and organized constituency. Think about the benefits. Farther in the future, and much more die fuse. If you are a coal mind and you are told to reduce the amount of dust in the atmosphere, you know what it is going to cost you to do that. If you are a coal miner, that might sound good, but you dont know if you are going to get black lung disease. There is no salient immediate benefit except that your employer is telling you, i have to trim benefits or trim jobs. The benefit side of that is less salient. If we were to leave regulation to open politics, rules wouldnt happen. Some rules would. But in response to emergencies or true crisis, the result is that we have a political dynamic of strong public advocacy groups on one side saying failure regulates a disaster and parties that are going to bear the cost is saying no, regulation is a disaster because it is going to kill jobs and ruin investment. The truth is in between. Regulation is not a game of extremes. It is a game of tradeoffs. It is an interpret of analyzing how we solve problems in a way that best balance cost and benefits. The party that bears the cost needs to acknowledge there are benefits and work to find a better way to achieve them. The parties that are going to get the benefits need to understand that there are costs and you cant ignore the consequences of imposing the cost and work for more efficient and incremental ways of achieving regulation. Right now that is not the political dynamic, but it is the dynamic in the agencies. They need to be left to do that in the system. One concern i have about one of the biggest proposal reform is out there is that it will interfere with the process fundamentally. Agencies need to be able to build a record. Not have that record challenge midstream but wait until it is completely built. And then that rule can be challenged in court. There are proposals out there to have interim records that are part of a proposed rule, challengeable in court. That prevents the agency from perfecting the record, doing a better job of the record. It actually allows challenges at an earlier stage. The way that agencies can avoid these unbalanced political dynamics and solve real problems is to have the opportunity to build a record. Is there evidence of benefits, is there evidence that these justify the cost. And make a determination based on that evidentiary evidence. If we leave it to the political realm, we run into significant problems. I want to return to what i think is at the foundation of sound regulation. The identification of real problems and the identification of really workable solutions. I do think that agencies get off on the wrong foot and the whole process that i think makes the apa works well falters when there are rules that are generated because of a belief or a big movement that claims that there is a problem to be solve without real evidence that the problem truly exists. In 2007, i wrote an article. It was something called network neutrality. Regulating with more questions than answers. I went through both sides of the debate and said each side could be right depending on the answers of hard questions. Questions about marginal value of different investments. Questions about the true economic incentives that different parties would have to discriminate or not discriminate. And i tried to make the case that those questions were not well answered. And i wrote the article because i was perplexed by the incredibly adamant arguments that we had to have regulation now, today, yesterday to stop all of this horrible stuff that wasnt yet happening. I think that its important as the fcc goes forward in reexamining rules that were issued in the last administration to look carefully at what questions we have the answers to. What questions we dont have the answers to. And not to be afraid to deregulate where mistakes were made but also not to be afraid to stick with regulation where the evidence shows it would not hurt investment and in fact would achieve some good. Thats why i started out by saying, i think a radical shift in direction can be a healthy thing from time to time. It can change perspective and get people to think differently and reexamine things that have not been assumed. Its got to be a period fundamentally of reanalysis and reexamination. It is my hope that is what will happen as the Commission Goes forward. One final note. Often the actions of agencies are pillaried in the public. This is tough. But i would urge agencies to stay the course. Most newspapers came out adamantly of the repeal of congress of the privacy regulations. Insufficiently covered in my view is the fact that this was a question of comparative institutional competence and a restoration of privacy funds. The federal trade commission. It wasnt leaving the space unregulated. It was changing the approach of regulation. That message did not get out there very well. They should stay the course. I would urge all agencies as they go forward in regulating or deregulate to adopt a similar po posture. Do what is right and do what careful examination of a rigorous record would show to be correct. And dont worry about the noise on the outside. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you very much, howard. That was a stimulating important address to lead off the conference and now we will hear from ambassador gray. After ambassador grays remarks hopefully we will have time for a few questions. Thank you very much. As a preliminary matter, i want to make it absolutely clear that howard has done a good job of maintaining the credibility of orria which is essential to keeping a close monitoring of the value and utility and the importance and the need. Especially the need for regulatory activity. And i am, certainly there are temptations, pressures to relax. In the last administration, howard never did it. Oira never did it. It needs a bigger budget. And it is in good hand. And so my thanks to you for doing, not doing, but commendation for pamaintaining. I will also say i am sorry you didnt take that job. I lived in a residence that had been built or renovated by a Russian Oligarch who was so disfavored in russia that he thought he would live out his years if he could in belgium where he was being pursued in all manner. So he did this marvelous residence. But he was so bad it turns out that the belgiums would never give him a visa. So the state department picked up the residence and that is where i lived. I had these local intelligence authors tell me this was the safest residence in the entire european system. We know of the radical cell that lived in belgium that was responsible for the attacks in paris. I should make clear that was only a joke. But now that i know about the russian connection, if it were true and if i had been offered that job, then i am glad to know what boyden just related. Well you dont know the full of it. [ laughter ] the intelligence expert said that i had the highest in safety equipment. Windows, electronics that no one could make work. But the centerpiece of my safety were huge, thick 6inch doors protecting my bedroom. Think of what you missed. These were known as fourth century doors. I didnt have courage to ask what on earth is fourth century. And why fourth . Fourth century doors, you might wonder what it is, and it is a door for you to have a half an hour to call the police whether you were in under attack. Could withstand anything thrown at it if you were in the fourth century. I had to tell the story. And my Communication Specialist came up to me and said you must talking about the fourth century door because its going to heap disgrace upon yourself, your mission and your country. I said why. But i have been twice briefed. They are wrong. What do i have . What you have is not a fourth century door, but a forced entry door. [ laughter ]. So you can see how it is easy to get mixed up. And language, sometimes well i dont argue about the quantifiable or nonquantifiable cost, but it is important to get a handle on what is going on with the rule that is about to be implemented. And facts are very important. And so understand is there a real problem is very important. I commend, again, our speaker for looking at that. I dont have much time, so i am going to go off into a little bit of a tangent. The identification of a problem is where he started and it really is key. Often, agencies will just take flight and they will take infamous or famous chevron doctrine, any hint of ambiguity in a statute is it is already to go flying off into the sunset. And sometimes the problems that they seek to cure, just plain dont exist at all. One of scalias best lines at the end of his life and last decisions in a famous case involving epa and Climate Change and tailoring, and i am saying this knowingly that the president just pulled out of the paris accords. The harms that epa was arguing, just plain didnt exist and the statute and talks in terms of big, big installations creating big, big pollution emissions, and this is not a co 2 kind of thing. Co2 can come out of a house and Office Building and you cant overeverything. The statute talked of 200ton emission limit. And what the statute actually meant was 100,000 tons. And that is where we are going to start. We are going to tailor the statute to what we think is the problem. And at one point, one of the cases said maybe you have to make that jump from 200 tons to 100,000 tons, you may have taken the wrong route in figuring out if this was a real problem and there wasnt really a problem in my opinion and scalia writes his opinion and say we are not going to sit idly by and wave on the docks. We are not going to sit liedly by and wave goodbye on the epa. Now in the Net Neutrality rule which was affirmed by a panel and went to a hearing which was denied. And they were powerful enough from judge brown and judge cavenaugh. They were powerful enough that it prompted a retaliatory opinion. If you want to know the current state of thinking about how to look at these issues with a broad brush assuming the hard work is figuring out what are the costs and benefits and what not have been done, assuming all of that has been done, if you want to look at the big picture, i commend you read these three opinions. Lead opinion trying to rebut or rebutting the two dissents. And brown steals a little line from scalia mimicking, his we are not going to sit idly by. We are not going to wave goodbye to the fcc and let it Wander Around in the sunset. And this is part of the problem. Agencies can take off in full flight under the way chevron works. And that is where some of the most reform oriented efforts are being pointed. And it is the courts that i think will have to do this first. I dont know how congress fixes something that is a court problem to begin with. But i think the courts are watching this carefully. And i think you will see some of the best writing on this in some of the opinions of the new justice about the relationship between nondelegation and the chevron doctrine and i think that what is going to happen is the courts, maybe a hope more than a prediction, but the courts are going to pin the agencies or more precisely the congress back and say you cant do this. It is too broad. There is no call for any particularly action, you have not identified a problem. You have thrown up your hands and say go regulate. And that is not enough. We have nothing to review on. And chevron doesnt aplay whply you have a big issue like Net Neutrality. So we are going to decide what the law is and maybe we will decide that your law is too vague, broad, and open ended. And maybe you have to go back and do it right and start again. Now i dont know if you will see any cases thrown out like scheckter was, but i think we will see a lot of case laws in the future narrowing the statute where it is going to make congress get a kick in the you know what and be precise. I did a lot of legislative work when i first came to washington and saw these markup sessions where food fights would take place and they were good drama, good enter tatainment and i hav asked people, how many have heard the amendment to the third degree . That sort of discouraging in a way. How many people have been to a markup session . Well more hands but not many. You would think most of the hands would go up. And thats the problem. We need more markup sessions and more amendments to the third degree. So thank you very much for the opportunity to speak. [ applause ] well if you are like me, you are probably thinking gee, maybe we could have just the rest of the day, you know, with the session with these two. Unfortunately we are not going to be able to do that. But weve got a little more time. I will say when i gave that introduction of ambassador gray, i didnt mention that he has his degree from the university of north carolina. I think he was editor in chief of the law review there. And as many of you know me well and have heard me say at previous conferences, i am a double dukie. Two degrees from duke university. So that was terrific. I want to ask a question actually, no one touched on this, but among the audience here, it is a topic that everyone is familiar with. And i think you two, your reactions would be useful. Chairman pi instituted a new practice at the fcc a few months ago, the practice is that he releases a draft ordered nprms, orders at the same time he three weeks before the fcc sunshine meeting. That the issue came to a head and first came up basically during the last round of the Net Neutrality proceeding when Many Congress people and others were asking to see the draft order. And it was considered at the time and still maybe by many to be fairly controversial because it hadnt been done. But now it has been done. I am going to ask him about it during our lunch conversation and probe a bit. But you two have had experience with the agencies, what is your reaction to this new way of doing business at the fcc in terms of making public these draft rule making proposals . Someone go first. If you wish. I think we have to see how it pans out. There are possible pros and possible cons. To the extent that a chairman of a commission is releasing a draft order that comes out of the Chairmans Office that other commissioners have not had a chance to weigh on or perhaps only a subset of commissioners have had a chance to weigh on. There is a problematic aspect in that it brings the public in at an early preliminary stage. While i think on one hand, it can be viewed as transparency, on the other hand, it can interfere with dialogue among the commissioners and they are releasing a regulation that speaks for all of the commission in a more balanced way. So there is the possibility that it could lead to a, you know, it can be a strategic play to limit the input of other commissioners on a controversial issue. Certainly at oria i fought tooth and nail against opening up all of the decisions that oira was having for all of the agency. We needed the ability to tell the agency you are wrong, ask hard questions and then put a draft out to the public who have gone through all of that internal deliberation. I can see positive things from it, but we have to say how it works out. Boyden, do you have reaction at all. This may not be exactly on point, but the internal deliberative process is very, very important, having been involved in it many times. I am quite partial to it. As an outsider sometimes i wonder if it doesnt shield agencies from the kind of transparency that howard is talking about. So there is a balancing act that goes on here and it is a tricky one and it is going to continue to be a tricky one probably for a long time. I am going to ask one more question. Howard, maybe this is to you, as you may know, the fcc, when it released its notice of proposed rule making for this round of the Net Neutrality saga, it specifically is asking for a cost benefit analysis. Most of you know the independent agencies are not required by the executive orders if i still understand this, to do these. But it is something that the fcc is doing. And many people have recommended that the agency do for the reasons that you talked about. I just want to know, how common is that among other independent agencies to under take what i think will be a very formal cost benefit analysis by the fcc in your experience . Thanks. It has been a mixed bag and sometimes the same agency will sometimes do it and sometimes not. For example in the case of the cfpb. My own view is that all agencies should have to do this. I do not believe, and i think i am the only oira administrator to say this, i dont think the independent agency should be under oira review. I think they should have the obligation to undertake the cost benefit analysis that the executive order requires because otherwise i think the public really doesnt have the full kinds of information it needs to inform a comment on the rulings. Thank you. For all of you standing back there, there are scattered seats. It is fantastic to see this huge crowd. That is gratifying. But there are seats up front. Even if they have a sign that says reserved on the seat. You can occupy them now and that will be fine for now. What i want to do maybe is take one or two questions from the audience. I want you to raise your hand if you have a question and i am going to recognize you and wait for the mic to be brought tou. And lets keep the questions succinct. It looks like alden abbot. Thanks very much. Question for howard. There have been a number of studies showing a great goeth in guidance documents and informal source of quasirule making which dont fall under executive orders. And some have made concerns that these are problems. Cost benefit analysis, these are things that are not seen by oira. Should that change . What is your view about that . Thanks, that is a great question and in fact senator langford has held hearings on this in which i have participated. I think it is a general matter. It would not be practical for an office like oira to review guidance documents. And i think to review every single one of them in advance to determine whether they violate those boundaries would be an enormous enormous amount of work and not an efficient use of resources. On the other hand, agencies do overstep. And the good news is that most of the time they are called out on that and challenged and told that they cannot do that. I think what there has to be is some kind of rule that basically says that a guidance document cannot have effect if it has not gone through a certain process internally at the agency and been posted in a way that is transparent with an explanation of how it relates to the under lying rule. What that means is an agency cannot come out and says our guidance document over here says you cannot store these chemicals anymore like that. Dont you have to do that by rule . So by having a public posting requirement and an explanation requirement and maybe even a Public Consultation requirement for significant guidances, a lot of the problems can be resolved. There is a terrific bush two administration administration, published in the register. We recirculated to agencies and said this really matter. And i think that is something that could be perhaps embedded in statute to make the requirements even stronger. Boyden, on the issue of guidance documents have anything you want to add or i think this will be the last comment. So if there is anything you want to add at all, briefly, please go ahead. Well i dont think its a ro matter you can possibly look at every guidance dumentd. I think for the ones that have impact, youll hear about them and know about them so im not really worried about it. My ending comment would be a change of subject back to the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and the fact that it is shielded, youre not even supposed to look at anything they do, i think. Im surprised you even mentioned them. Anyway, theyre free of all constraints and all accountability and all transparency. And they spent, because they take their funding comes from the feds, the feds require that the funds are prohibited from nrtdvening at all in what the cfpb does, congress has no power of the purse. But he does have to testify, cordray, occasionally, and he did testify. It turned out they had spent several hundred Million Dollars on the renovation of their headquarters. And one of the subcommittee chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Said to him, well, who was in charge of this rather lavish renovation . And his response, this member of congress was, what does it matter to you . Okay. Well, i think what matters to me right at this moment is that i think youll agree that it would be would have been difficult to find two other people with more experience and background scholarly experience, but more importantly, practical experience in the area of regulation and to talk about Lessons Learned. So please join me in thanking them both. [ applause ] so, what were going to do now, im going to ask the panel to come up for our next program. And get situated. I dont expect that to take more than just a couple minutes. Then well resume. This sunday, q a is in hyde park, new york, at the franklin d. Roosevelt president ial library and museum, where we go inside for a rare look at fdrs personal office and collection of artifacts, with paul sparrow, the museums director. This library opened in june of 1941. He was still president of the United States, so this became the northern oval office. Fdr had an incredibly inquisitive mind. There were 22,000 books. 914 books in this room alone. Every book in here was slektded by fdr to be in this room. This room is almost identical to the way it was on the day that fdr died. Nothing has changed. Watch q a from the franklin d. Roosevelt president ial library and museum in new york sunday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. Cspan, where history unfolds daily. In 1979, cspan was created as a Public Service by americas Cable Television companies. And its brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. Fcc chair ajit pi took part in a sitdown discussion at the free state conference on telecommunications policy. He discussed Net Neutrality, Internet Service provider regulations and 5g wireless networks. Randolph may moderated the hourlong conversation. Were going to get started again, if i could have everyones attention. Our chairman is probably much better than i am at getting everyones attention, so you can do that again, if need be. Well, thank all of you again for coming. Its a terrific turnout. You know, earlier, ico