Portman keeps up attack, accuses Obama of hiding regulatory agenda

Portman wrote a letter to Obama on Thursday asking the president why he did not publish the administration’s annual regulatory agenda in April or May this year, as required by law.

{mosads}”Your administration set April 13, 2012, as the ‘firm deadline’ for agencies to submit their regulatory plans to the Office of Management and Budget,” Portman wrote. “But more than four months have passed, and those plans have inexplicably not been made public.”

Portman argued further that the lack of published plans “can hardly be explained by a lack of regulatory activity.”

“The more than 160 economically significant rules issued from February 2009 through February 2012 marked a 40 percent increase over the same three-year period in the last administration and 20 percent increase over the Clinton administration,” he wrote.

On Wednesday, Portman said Obama’s inability to win a single vote for his budget proposal in Congress is a “failure of leadership,” and said the United States “can’t afford four more years” of President Obama.

Portman, a former Cabinet member under the last Bush administration, was seen as a potential running mate for Mitt Romney, and could play some role in a Romney administration.