The article argues that recent executive overreach and politicization have severely undermined established norms of U.S. civil-military relations. To restore professional standards, the incoming Congress must actively exercise its oversight powers, moving beyond mere criticism to demanding transparency in defense policy and personnel decisions. Key reforms include enforcing meritocratic promotion processes, requiring documented justification for senior officer removals, and preventing the partisan use of the military. These actions are crucial for bolstering public trust and ensuring the military remains a nonpartisan instrument of civilian control.
Reforming regulation: A proposal to end unsound cost-benefit analysis requirements for tax and transfer rules
English Summary
The Brookings article argues that mandatory formal cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is unsound and counterproductive when applied to tax rules and social transfer programs. This is because these regulations are fundamentally driven by resource redistribution and fiscal goals, which CBA fails to account for, treating all gains and losses as offsetting 'washes.' The authors propose eliminating the CBA requirement for these transfer rules, restoring existing exemptions for tax law and similar programs. Implementing this change would streamline the regulatory process, accelerate rulemaking, and improve policy quality by allowing agencies to use analysis methods appropriate to the rule's true distributional and fiscal impact.
中文摘要
該布魯金斯智庫的文章主張，當將強制正式的成本效益分析（CBA）應用於稅收規定和社會轉移計畫時，其做法是缺乏根據且適得其反的。這是因為這些規定本質上是由資源再分配和財政目標所驅動，而 CBA 無法考慮到這一點，它將所有收益和損失都視為相互抵消的「洗牌」。作者們建議廢除對這些轉移規則的 CBA 要求，恢復現有的稅法和類似計畫的豁免權。實施此項變革將能簡化監管流程、加速規則制定，並透過允許機構使用適應規則真實分配和財政影響的分析方法，從而提升政策品質。
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