WASHINGTON — House Budget Committee Republicans ratcheted up pressure on the White House Monday to provide details on implementation of a law intended to offset the budgetary costs of administrative rules and regulations, which they claim have run into the trillions of dollars during President Joe Biden’s first term.

In a letter to White House budget director Shalanda Young, House Budget Chairman Jodey C. Arrington, R-Texas, and Jack Bergman, R-Mich., the panel’s oversight task force chairman, said they have “serious concerns” about the Office of Management and Budget’s treatment of the 2023 requirement.

The “administrative pay-as-you-go” provision in the 2023 debt limit law requires federal agencies to propose spending cuts or other pay-fors to offset “economically significant” or “major” rules or regulations that would cost $1 billion or more over a decade and $100 million or more annually. But there are waivers baked into the law that have thus far rendered the provision basically toothless.

Arrington and Bergman wrote to Young that the Biden administration has either proposed or already implemented executive actions that could cost more than $2 trillion over a decade, according to an informal running tally Budget panel Republicans updated on Friday.

Among the most expensive is a 2021 overhaul of the Agriculture Department formula which determines Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, which led to a 23 percent increase and added around $300 billion to food stamp costs over a decade.

Pandemic-era pauses in student loan repayments and other initiatives to forgive student debt cost hundreds of billions of dollars, according to the committee. Another costly regulation tightens vehicle emission standards.

The GOP letter seeks details on how many rules since Biden took office would qualify for the administrative pay-as-you-go requirement, how many have been given waivers by OMB, and the estimated cost of each rule where pay-as-you-go was waived.

“As our nation faces an unprecedented and continuously growing debt crisis, offsetting costs of administrative rules is imperative,” the letter says. The letter expresses concern that “OMB is effectively ignoring” the requirement.

As described in a November 2023 report from the Government Accountability Office, OMB said that of 28 major rules that were finalized between June 3, 2023 and Nov. 3, 2023, only two were costly enough to qualify for administrative pay-as-you-go.

OMB waived the offset requirement for those two rules — Biden’s July 2023 income-driven student loan repayment plan and a November Health and Human Services rule updating Medicare home health care reimbursements — citing the law’s waiver authority if a rule is necessary for “effective program delivery” or “delivery of essential services.” No further explanation of such waivers is required under the law.

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