On September 22, 2011, a group of Members from the House and the Senate introduced the Regulatory Accountability Act of 2011 (RAA, H.R. 3010 and S. 1606 ). The House passed H.R. 3010 on December 2, 2011, by a vote of 253-167. If enacted, the RAA would make broad changes to the federal rulemaking process. Federal agencies currently issue regulations in accordance with requirements in the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), as well as other statutes and executive orders that apply to rulemaking. The RAA would make the most significant legislative changes to the APA since its enactment in 1946. The RAA would modify and enact into law numerous new general procedures for rulemaking that appear in narrower form in existing law, executive orders, and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) documents. On one hand, the RAA has been praised by industry and trade associations as legislation that would "update the 65 year old regulatory process" by making "the regulatory process more transparent, agencies more accountable, and regulations more cost effective." On the other hand, the RAA has been criticized by government watchdog and environmental groups, such as OMB Watch, as legislation that would result in a "radical overhaul" of the rulemaking process, compromising "public health, worker safety, and environmental quality goals." The White House has issued a Statement of Administration Policy (SAP) on H.R. 3010 , which announced that the President's "senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill." The SAP states that "the [RAA] would impose unprecedented procedural requirements on agencies that would prevent them from performing their statutory responsibilities." The SAP also asserts that the RAA's new procedures are "unnecessary" and would "invite frivolous litigation." A comparison of the RAA to requirements in existing law, executive orders, and OMB documents indicates that although the RAA has many characteristics in common with existing statutes and executive orders, it would add many requirements to the rulemaking process. For example, the RAA would allow for judicial review of considerations for which it is not presently available. The RAA would impose new requirements on independent regulatory agencies, such as consultation with the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) and cost-benefit analysis. The RAA would extend many rulemaking requirements in Executive Order 12866 that currently only apply to "significant" rules, such as OIRA review and cost-benefit analysis, to all rules. The RAA would require agencies to provide specific information on statutory and legal considerations, costs and benefits, and alternatives to rules. The RAA would change the procedures for the issuance of agency guidance and require agencies to identify costs and benefits for major or "novel legal or policy issue" guidance. Additionally, the RAA would require the publication of advance notices of proposed rulemaking for "major" rules, "high-impact" rules, and rules involving "novel legal or policy issue[s] arising out of statutory mandates" and add a mandatory 90-day waiting period before publication of a notice of proposed rulemaking for such rules. The bill would set minimum time periods for notice and comment of 120 days for major and high-impact rules, and 60 days for other rules. Potential effects the RAA may have on the rulemaking process include an increased level of influence for OIRA and, by extension, the President; the potential for rulemaking to take longer than it currently does, particularly for major, high-impact, and novel legal or policy issue rules; a re-establishment of the standards for the selection of regulatory options that is based on minimizing costs rather than maximizing net benefits; the potential need for additional agency resources; a potential increase in agency use of adjudication; and the potential for increased and/or lengthier litigation. These issues are discussed below in the " Potential Issues for Congress " section of the report. The House and Senate versions of the RAA contain some minor structural differences, as well as major substantive differences in the judicial review provisions with regard to major and high-impact rules and judicial review of an agency's consideration of costs or benefits. Additionally, the House version of the RAA adds requirements for rules involving "novel legal or policy issue[s] arising out of statutory mandates," and the Senate version does not contain additional requirements for such rules. Under the version of the RAA that passed the House, there would be a more explicit requirement that agencies consider "an estimate of the net gain or loss in domestic jobs." The version of the bill discussed in this report is the version that was passed by the House on December 2, 2011. This report begins by providing a brief overview of the major requirements of the rulemaking process currently found in statutes, executive orders, and OMB documents, many of which would be changed or enacted into law by the proposed RAA. The report then discusses the RAA's proposed changes to these existing rulemaking requirements, providing a side-by-side comparison of the requirements of the RAA to these existing provisions. The " Potential Issues for Congress " section provides some general conclusions and analysis, and it discusses some of the potential implications of the proposed bill. Appendix A lists each provision of the RAA in order, alongside any current related requirements. Finally, Appendix B lists the acronyms used in the report. The most significant piece of rulemaking legislation from the past century was the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946. The APA established standards for the issuance of rules using formal rulemaking and informal rulemaking procedures. Informal rulemaking, also known as "notice and comment" rulemaking or "Section 553" rulemaking, is the most common type of rulemaking. For informal rulemaking under the APA, agencies are required to publish a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) in the Federal Register , take comments on the NPRM, publish a final rule in the Federal Register , and provide for a 30-day waiting period before the rule can become effective. The APA specifically authorizes federal agencies to dispense with its requirements for notice and comment if the agency for good cause finds that the use of traditional procedures would be "impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest." The APA also provides a good cause exception for the 30-day waiting period between the publication of a final rule and its effective date. While the notice-and-comment procedures in the APA provide the general structure of the rulemaking process, a number of other requirements have been added to the process in the decades since the APA. The Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) established a process under which agencies have to consider the paperwork burden associated with regulatory and other actions. The Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA) requires regulatory impact analyses for rules that will have a "significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities" and establishes other requirements. Title II of the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA) added requirements for agencies to analyze and reduce costs associated with federal mandates upon state, local, and tribal governments and the private sector. The Congressional Review Act (CRA) established a mechanism through which Congress could overturn federal regulations and required that agencies submit their rules to both houses of Congress and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) before the rules can take effect. The Information Quality Act (IQA) required OMB to create guidance for agencies "for ensuring and maximizing the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information" disseminated by agencies and required agencies to establish their own guidelines on information quality. In addition to the current statutory requirements for the rulemaking process, Presidents also have issued executive orders and OMB has produced documents providing requirements and guidelines for agencies to follow when issuing rules. Executive Order 12866, issued by President Clinton in 1993, calls for OIRA to review "significant" regulatory actions at both the proposed and final rule stage. Furthermore, agencies are required to assess potential costs and benefits for "significant" rules, and, for those deemed as "economically significant" regulatory actions, agencies are required to perform a cost-benefit analysis and assess the costs and benefits of "reasonably feasible alternatives" to the planned rule. Under E.O. 12866, agencies generally must "propose or adopt a regulation only upon a reasoned determination that the benefits" of the rule "justify its costs." To provide guidance to agencies on what to include and consider in their cost-benefit analyses of rules, OMB issued OMB Circular A-4, a document that describes "best practices" of agencies' economic analyses. OMB, under President George W. Bush, also provided guidelines for agencies to follow when issuing guidance documents. The combination of statutory requirements, executive orders, and OMB directives comprises the bulk of the current, generally applicable requirements agencies must follow when issuing regulations. The RAA would change or enact into law a number of the requirements mentioned here. Additionally, particular agency statutes may add requirements specific to that agency, and there is a substantial body of case law interpreting existing rulemaking requirements that would be affected by the RAA. The remainder of this report will examine the main provisions of the bill and compare the changes the bill proposes with the current, generally applicable requirements and case law, where appropriate. This report examines each section of the bill in the order that they are included in the bill. When possible, numbers and letters are included in each section of the report to help clarify what part of the bill coincides with each section of the report. As a preliminary matter, the RAA uses the APA's definition of an agency, meaning that the RAA would impose additional requirements on independent regulatory agencies, which have been exempted from certain statutory and executive order mandates. For example, the parts of E.O. 12866 that concern centralized review of regulations by OIRA do not apply to statutorily designated "independent regulatory agencies." However, other parts of E.O.