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Business groups hailed the initiative.
"This is the most serious attempt by any chief executive to get control over the regulatory process, which spews out thousands of regulations a year," said William L. Kovacs, a vice president of the United States Chamber of Commerce. "Because of the executive order, regulations will be less onerous and more reasonable. Federal officials will have to pay more attention to the costs imposed on business, state and local governments, and society."
Under the executive order, each federal agency must estimate "the combined aggregate costs and benefits of all its regulations" each year. Until now, agencies often tallied the costs and the benefits of major rules one by one, without measuring the cumulative effects.
Gary D. Bass, executive director of O.M.B. Watch, a liberal-leaning consumer group that monitors the Office of Management and Budget, criticized Mr. Bush's order, saying, "It will result in more delay and more White House control over the day-to-day work of federal agencies."
"By requiring agencies to show a 'market failure,' " Dr. Bass said, "President Bush has created another hurdle for agencies to clear before they can issue rules protecting public health and safety."
Wesley P. Warren, program director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, who worked at the White House for seven years under President Bill Clinton, said, "The executive order is a backdoor attempt to prevent E.P.A. from being able to enforce environmental safeguards that keep cancer-causing chemicals and other pollutants out of the air and water."
Business groups have complained about the proliferation of guidance documents. David W. Beier, a senior vice president of Amgen, the biotechnology company, said Medicare officials had issued such documents "with little or no public input."
Hugh M. O'Neill, a vice president of the pharmaceutical company Sanofi-Aventis, said guidance documents sometimes undermined or negated the effects of formal regulations.
In theory, guidance documents do not have the force of law. But the White House said the documents needed closer scrutiny because they "can have coercive effects" and "can impose significant costs" on the public. Many guidance documents are made available to regulated industries but not to the public.
Paul R. Noe, who worked on regulatory policy at the White House from 2001 to 2006, said such aberrations would soon end. "In the past, guidance documents were often issued in the dark," Mr. Noe said. "The executive order will ensure they are issued in the sunshine, with more opportunity for public comment."
Under the new White House policy, any guidance document expected to have an economic effect of $100 million a year or more must be posted on the Internet, and agencies must invite public comment, except in emergencies in which the White House grants an exemption.
The White House told agencies that in writing guidance documents, they could not impose new legal obligations on anyone and could not use "mandatory language such as 'shall,' 'must,' 'required' or 'requirement.' "
The executive order was issued as White House aides were preparing for a battle over the nomination of Susan E. Dudley to be administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget.
President Bush first nominated Ms. Dudley last August. The nomination died in the Senate, under a barrage of criticism from environmental and consumer groups, which said she had been hostile to government regulation. Mr. Bush nominated her again on Jan. 9.
With Democrats in control, the Senate appears unlikely to confirm Ms. Dudley. But under the Constitution, the president could appoint her while the Senate is in recess, allowing her to serve through next year.
Some of Ms. Dudley's views are reflected in the executive order. In a primer on regulation written in 2005, while she was at the Mercatus Center of George Mason University in Northern Virginia, Ms. Dudley said that government regulation was generally not warranted "in the absence of a significant market failure."
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