Removing Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Home Construction
Executive Order 14394 of March 13, 2026
Last updated March 26, 2026
Identifier: Executive Order 14394
Full title: Removing Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Home Construction
Date signed: March 13, 2026
Issuing authority: President Donald J. Trump
Summary: EO 14394 directs multiple federal agencies to reduce or eliminate regulatory requirements that the administration characterizes as unnecessary barriers to housing construction. The order covers four main areas: (1) environmental and water-related permitting under the Clean Water Act and NEPA; (2) federal program rules related to housing development and affordability; (3) energy efficiency and water-use requirements for federally financed housing; and (4) a directive to HUD to develop, within 60 days, a set of “best practices” for state and local governments, with federal funding and grant programs to be revised to incentivize adoption of those practices. The order also directs Treasury and HUD to align Opportunity Zone and New Markets Tax Credit programs with single-family home construction.
Verdict: EO 14394 targets a real and significant structural problem, but its core directives rely on undefined standards that transfer substantial interpretive authority to unelected agency heads, its environmental exemption provisions contradict statutory mandates, and its most ambitious provisions—reshaping state and local land use policy—cannot be achieved by executive order. The gap between what this order signals and what it can structurally deliver is the primary design failure.
Problem Scale vs. Solution Scale
The housing shortage is real, documented, and broadly harmful. The United States faces an estimated deficit of 3.7 million units as of Q3 2024 (Freddie Mac, Housing Supply: Still Undersupplied, 2024), with other methodologies producing higher estimates — Zillow puts the figure at 4.5 million, NAR at 5.5 million, reflecting genuine methodological differences in how latent demand is measured. Housing cost burdens affect both low-income renters and middle-class buyers. New construction has not kept pace with household formation for over a decade.
However, the primary drivers of housing underproduction are predominantly local, not federal. Exclusionary zoning, single-family-only restrictions, lengthy discretionary review processes, neighborhood opposition, and local permitting delays are the documented leading causes of constrained housing supply in high-demand metros. Local zoning regulations prohibit anything other than single-family detached houses on three-quarters of residential land in most U.S. cities (Schuetz, Brookings, 2020); the NYU Furman Center’s research across multiple markets documents how restrictive land use regulations function as the central supply constraint, with federal environmental requirements as a real but secondary cost factor (Furman Center, Housing Shortage: Policymakers Test New Reforms, 2023).
This creates a structural mismatch in the order’s design: its most binding directives (agency “shall” language) target federal environmental rules that are a secondary driver of the problem. Its directive addressing the primary drivers — state and local land use — is advisory (”best practices”), incentive-based, and legally constrained by federalism. An executive order cannot rewrite local zoning law. It can only offer carrots and label existing local policies as “arbitrary.”
The order allocates its strongest tools to the least binding constraints, and its weakest tools to the most binding constraints.
This is not an argument against the goal. It is an argument about whether the mechanism can achieve it.
Structural Analysis
Coordination architecture
This order directs parallel action across nine separate federal agencies covering four distinct regulatory regimes: CWA permitting, NEPA review, energy efficiency standards, and housing finance rules. There is no designated lead agency, no unified reporting mechanism, no interagency coordination structure, and no single point of accountability for whether the directives are being implemented or whether they are producing results. Each of the nine agencies will make independent determinations about what the order’s undefined standards mean for their programs. This is not a coordination architecture — it is nine simultaneous, disconnected regulatory reviews pointed at a shared problem with no mechanism for synthesis or accountability.
Vague enforcement
This is the order’s most significant structural weakness. Key operative terms are undefined throughout:
“Unduly burdensome” (Sec. 2b, 2c) — appears four times as the trigger for agency action. No definition, no threshold, no process for determining what qualifies. Each agency head decides independently what “unduly burdensome” means for their regulations.
“Maximally exempts or reduces burdens” (Sec. 3a, 3b) — directs CEQ and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation to interpret NEPA and Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act in the way that creates the maximum exemptions for housing. This is a direction to agencies to read statutory mandates as narrowly as possible. It is not a neutral implementation instruction.
“Non-evidence-based building codes” (Sec. 4a(ii)) — HUD is to list these as best practices for state/local governments to curtail. Who determines what is evidence-based? By what process? What qualifies as evidence? None of this is defined.
“Arbitrary limitations” (Sec. 4a(iv)) — the order explicitly names urban growth boundaries and growth moratoria as examples of “arbitrary limitations on residential housing development.” These are democratically enacted land use policies at the state and local level. Labeling them “arbitrary” in official federal guidance is a legal and political claim, not a neutral factual description.
Accountability gaps
The order contains no reporting requirements, no implementation timeline for most directives (only the 60-day best practices deadline in Sec. 4a), no defined success metrics, and no oversight mechanism. If EPA and the Army Corps determine that wetlands permitting requirements are not unduly burdensome and decline to revise them, there is no consequence specified in the order. If agencies comply but housing costs do not decline, there is no feedback loop to identify which interventions worked and which did not.
Grant conditionality design
Section 4(b) directs federal agencies to revise “grant applications and requirements” to advance the state/local best practices. This is a federal funding conditionality mechanism: adopt our preferred land use policies or face reduced access to federal programs. This approach has constitutional constraints under South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203 (1987) (conditions must be related to the federal interest in the funded program) and NFIB v. Sebelius, 567 U.S. 519 (2012) (conditions cannot be coercive in practical effect). Whether conditioning transportation grants on specific zoning practices satisfies the relatedness test is genuinely contested. The incentive structure also creates pressure on state and local governments to adopt policies under federal influence that they might not adopt through their own democratic processes — which raises accountability questions separate from the legal ones.
Power concentration
The NEPA provision (Sec. 3a) is the most significant power concentration element. CEQ is directed to use categorical exclusions “in a manner that maximally exempts” housing construction from environmental review. Categorical exclusions are supposed to be applied to categories of actions that have been documented to produce no significant environmental impact. Directing CEQ to maximize their application to a broad category (all housing construction) effectively converts a case-by-case determination into a blanket policy — one that can be established through guidance rather than notice-and-comment rulemaking, bypassing the public participation requirements that exist for a reason.
Sunset provisions
None. No review mechanism, no expiration, no required assessment of outcomes.
Executive displacement of statutory oversight
The NEPA categorical exclusion approach and the Section 106 “maximize exemptions” directive both reduce existing statutory oversight mechanisms via executive guidance rather than statutory amendment. Congress established NEPA and the National Historic Preservation Act with specific procedural requirements. Directing agencies to find ways to maximize exemptions from those requirements is functionally an executive branch override of congressional mandates — achieved not by repealing the statutes but by instructing agencies to interpret them as narrowly as possible.
Abstraction Layer Analysis
Plain-English sidebar: This section examines whether the order’s design gives agencies clear enough instructions to implement it consistently and accountably. Think of it this way: the EO sets a destination but doesn’t define the route, the fuel requirements, or who’s responsible if the vehicle breaks down. Nine separate agencies are each handed a different map with key terms left blank, and no one is coordinating the trip. The technical analysis below names the specific places where the instructions fail — not as criticism of the goal, but as an engineering diagnosis of why the design will produce inconsistent results.
This section applies a systems engineering lens to EO 14394’s implementation design. It is distinct from the structural flags above, which ask what the order does. This section asks how well it knows what it’s doing — whether the design separates policy goals cleanly from implementation specifics, and whether the interfaces between those layers are well-defined.
Overall finding: EO 14394 has a significant abstraction layer problem in the opposite direction from most poorly designed legislation. Rather than over-specifying implementation (hardcoding values that belong in regulation), it under-specifies — delegating enormous interpretive authority to agency heads without minimum standards, thereby creating an implementation layer with undefined contracts. The result is that nine separate agencies will make independent determinations of what “unduly burdensome,” “maximally exempt,” and “arbitrary” mean, with no unifying standard and no coordination mechanism.
Specific collapses identified from direct text review:
Undefined enforcement triggers at operative clauses. “Unduly burdensome” (Sec. 2b, 2c) is the trigger condition for agency action to “consider eliminating” rules. This is a penalty trigger — regulations meeting the definition are candidates for elimination — but the definition is entirely delegated without minimum standards. Compare this to statutory language that defines burden through quantitative thresholds, procedural tests, or reference to enumerated criteria. None of those anchors exist here.
Maximization as a policy directive. “Maximally exempts or reduces burdens” (Sec. 3a, 3b) is not a policy goal, it is a maximization instruction. It tells agencies to find the boundary of what they can do and go there — without defining what constraints bound the maximization. This collapses the distinction between “implement the statute as Congress intended” and “find the outer limit of what we can avoid doing under the statute.” These are categorically different instructions. The order conflates them.
Undefined quality standards at penalty exposure. Sec. 4a(ii) includes “non-evidence-based building codes” as an example of mandates HUD should list for state/local curtailment. Building codes are safety standards. “Evidence-based” is a contested methodological standard in building science with genuine expert disagreement. Calling for curtailment of “non-evidence-based” codes without defining the evidentiary standard creates pressure to remove safety requirements based on an undefined test.
60-day implementation window for complex multi-stakeholder guidance. Section 4(a) requires HUD to “develop and promulgate” a comprehensive series of regulatory best practices for all state and local governments within 60 days. The best practices cover permitting, building codes, manufactured housing, land use boundaries, and incentive alignment. Developing defensible, implementable guidance on this scope in 60 days, without notice-and-comment process, bypasses the rulemaking procedures that exist specifically to catch implementation defects before deployment. This is an SLA baked into the executive layer without exception handling.
No interface definition between federal “best practices” and state/local authority. Section 4’s core mechanism is federal guidance that states and localities are incentivized to adopt. But the order does not define the interface: what happens when state law conflicts with the best practices? What is the federal claim of authority for conditioning grants on adoption of specific land use policies? What is the minimum compliance threshold? These are undefined function contracts — the downstream callers (state/local governments, federal grant agencies) will implement inconsistently because the API is underspecified.
Clean abstraction: Section 5 (Opportunity Zone alignment) is the order’s cleanest section. It directs Treasury and HUD to evaluate mechanisms to align existing programs — a properly scoped study directive that does not attempt to change statutory programs by executive guidance.
Legal Impact Assessment
Citations verified via LegesGPT. Confidence levels reflect the viability of a legal challenge, not a prediction of litigation outcomes. This is a vulnerability audit, not a litigation forecast.
CWA Section 404 and wetlands permitting (Sec. 2a)
Confidence: Contested
The order directs EPA and the Army Corps to “review and revise” wetlands and stormwater permitting requirements. The order itself — framed as directing agencies to act “consistent with applicable law” — is not facially unconstitutional. The legal vulnerability lives at the implementation layer: any actual revision to binding Section 404 standards must proceed through APA notice-and-comment rulemaking, not guidance or informal agency action. Section 404 requires that disposal site guidelines be developed through statutory criteria (33 U.S.C. § 1344(b)); they are not purely discretionary policy statements available for revision by executive direction alone.
Additional exposure comes from the “maximally exempt” framing in Sec. 3a. A policy directive to maximize NEPA exemptions applied to construction near waters increases the risk that agencies will be found to have prejudged outcomes or foreclosed required statutory consideration — particularly as NEPA scope and causation doctrine remains actively litigated.
Relevant authority: Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952) (executive power at “lowest ebb” when contrary to Congressional will); CWA §404, 33 U.S.C. § 1344(b), (e); APA 5 U.S.C. § 553 (notice-and-comment for legislative rules); 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A) (arbitrary and capricious); Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Ass’n v. State Farm, 463 U.S. 29 (1983); FCC v. Fox Television Stations, 556 U.S. 502 (2009).
NEPA categorical exclusions (Sec. 3a)
Confidence: High
CEQ is directed to implement NEPA “in a manner that maximally exempts or reduces burdens on housing construction,” including through categorical exclusions. This provision has the highest legal vulnerability in the order. Categorical exclusions require an agency determination — grounded in a documented evidentiary record — that a category of actions normally produces no significant environmental effects. A directive to maximize their application to housing construction as a class, implemented through guidance rather than notice-and-comment rulemaking or a documented administrative record, creates strong APA exposure on two grounds: (1) new or expanded CEs issued without record support are vulnerable as improperly issued legislative rules or as arbitrary and capricious; and (2) the “maximally exempt” direction creates heightened risk of an APA challenge by signaling outcome-driven avoidance of NEPA procedures rather than case-specific “hard look” compliance where required.
The ambiguity in the order between CEQ guidance and individual agency rulemaking authority for CE establishment is itself a litigation target.
Relevant authority: NEPA, 42 U.S.C. § 4332(2)(C); APA 5 U.S.C. § 553 and § 706(2)(A); Robertson v. Methow Valley Citizens Council, 490 U.S. 332 (1989) (NEPA’s purpose is informed decisionmaking); Department of Transportation v. Public Citizen, 541 U.S. 752 (2004).
Federal funding conditionality (Sec. 4b)
Confidence: Contested
Section 4(b) directs multiple agencies to revise grant applications and requirements to advance the state/local best practices. The legal vulnerability has three components.
First, agencies can only revise grant conditions “within their respective authorities” — where the underlying grant statute does not authorize conditioning on specific zoning or land-use reforms, agency action is vulnerable as exceeding statutory jurisdiction (APA 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(C)).
Second, under South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203 (1987), Spending Clause conditions must be related to the federal interest in the funded program. Conditioning housing grants on permitting reforms is more defensible than conditioning transportation grants on zoning changes — the latter faces a credible relatedness challenge.
Third, if agencies condition large, entrenched formula grants (particularly transportation) rather than new discretionary competitive grants, coercion arguments become plausible under NFIB v. Sebelius, 567 U.S. 519 (2012). Coercion analysis under NFIB is most plausible when a condition threatens loss of substantial existing funding, not merely the offer of new funds. The order does not specify whether “revise grant applications and requirements” means eligibility conditions, scoring preferences, or technical assistance — a distinction that significantly affects legal exposure and maps to a graduated risk ladder:
Lowest risk: optional technical assistance and model ordinance dissemination — generally not reviewable as final agency action
Medium risk: competitive grant scoring preferences tied to best practices adoption
Highest risk: conditioning large formula grants or grant renewal on adoption of specific zoning or land-use reforms
States also have a “clear notice” argument if conditions evolve through shifting guidance documents rather than clear statutory or regulatory language. See Pennhurst State School & Hospital v. Halderman, 451 U.S. 1 (1981).
Relevant authority: U.S. Const. Art. I, § 8, cl. 1 (Spending Clause); South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203 (1987); NFIB v. Sebelius, 567 U.S. 519 (2012); Pennhurst State School & Hospital v. Halderman, 451 U.S. 1 (1981); APA 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(C); Youngstown, 343 U.S. 579.
Energy efficiency standards for manufactured housing (Sec. 2c)
Confidence: High
The order directs agencies to “eliminate” energy efficiency and water-use requirements for manufactured housing. Where Congress has mandated that standards exist — rather than merely permitting them — an executive order cannot direct their elimination. The Take Care Clause (Article II) and the APA’s “not in accordance with law” standard (5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A), (C)) both constrain this.
The distinction between “reform” and “eliminate” is operative and legally significant. Reform through notice-and-comment rulemaking, with a reasoned explanation for changed standards, is achievable within statutory bounds. Elimination of congressionally mandated standards is not. The order’s “to the maximum extent practicable and consistent with applicable law” qualifier provides agencies some interpretive cover — allowing them to argue “eliminate” means “remove discretionary overlays not required by statute” — but any agency that cites this order as justification for removing standards Congress has affirmatively mandated creates a vulnerable administrative record.
The statutory mandate is unambiguous. 42 U.S.C. § 17071(a)(1) provides that the Secretary “shall by regulation establish standards for energy efficiency in manufactured housing.” This is a congressional command, not a permission. Section 17071(b)(3) further requires that those standards be updated within one year of any revision to the International Energy Conservation Code — an ongoing obligation, not a one-time act. Section 17071(c) creates civil penalty liability for manufacturers who violate the regulations, an enforcement mechanism that full elimination would extinguish.
Two legally distinct scenarios follow from this:
Complete rescission — rescinding the standards entirely — is cleanly ultra vires where Congress has imposed an affirmative “shall establish” duty. An executive order cannot direct an agency to nullify a mandatory rulemaking duty, an active update obligation, and a statutory enforcement regime simultaneously. This is the “High” vulnerability scenario.
Setting minimal standards — technically maintaining standards while reducing them to near-zero stringency — is a distinct and harder case. An agency could argue it is complying with the “shall establish” mandate while exercising discretion over stringency. This scenario is legally contested rather than cleanly ultra vires, and would be challenged on arbitrary-and-capricious grounds or as contrary to the statute’s evident purpose — a viable challenge, but a different theory.
Relevant authority: 42 U.S.C. § 17071 (Energy Policy Act, Pub. L. 110–140, § 413 (2007)); Article II (Take Care Clause); Youngstown, 343 U.S. 579; APA 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A), (C); State Farm, 463 U.S. 29; FCC v. Fox, 556 U.S. 502.
NHPA Section 106 review (Sec. 3b)
Confidence: Contested
The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation is directed to develop guidance “maximally exempting, or reducing burdens on” housing construction from Section 106 review “so that reporting requirements are no more burdensome than necessary.” The legal vulnerability depends heavily on what the guidance actually does. The second clause — reporting requirements “no more burdensome than necessary” — is a procedural-streamlining goal with reasonable legal footing. The first clause — “maximally exempting” — is more exposed if the guidance attempts to declare whole categories of undertakings outside Section 106’s statutory trigger rather than streamlining how consultation is conducted.
Section 106 imposes a procedural duty on federal agencies for covered undertakings (54 U.S.C. § 306108). That duty runs to the undertaking agency, not to ACHP — meaning ACHP guidance cannot remove the obligation even if it purports to. ACHP’s role is to participate in consultation and issue regulations; it cannot by guidance alone erase a statutory trigger that attaches to a different agency’s undertaking. If guidance is treated as practically binding by agencies — incorporated into programmatic agreements or internal directives — and it functions to eliminate reviews that the statute requires, the APA vulnerability is substantial. The degree to which ACHP guidance is treated as binding in Section 106 litigation varies by circuit and implementation.
Relevant authority: NHPA § 106, codified at 54 U.S.C. § 306108; APA 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A), (C); § 553 (if guidance functions as a legislative rule).
Cross-cutting vulnerabilities
Three structural patterns run across all five areas and can be cited together:
Guidance as rulemaking substitute. CEQ, ACHP, and HUD are directed to achieve substantive regulatory change through “guidance” rather than notice-and-comment rulemaking. Where guidance is binding in effect, it is vulnerable as an improperly issued legislative rule under APA § 553. The label does not determine the legal classification; the practical effect does. Note that guidance is typically only challengeable when it constitutes final agency action with practical binding effect — the threshold for review requires either a consummation of agency decisionmaking or direct legal consequences. APA § 704; Bennett v. Spear, 520 U.S. 154 (1997).
Outcome-direction replacing analysis. The “maximally exempts” language (Sec. 3a, 3b) instructs agencies to find the outer limit of what they can avoid doing under statute. Courts have distinguished permissible policy priorities from impermissible outcome-determination that forecloses required statutory consideration. This framing increases the probability of successful arbitrary-and-capricious challenges when agencies act on it.
Executive direction as statutory substitute. Binding change to regulatory standards established by or pursuant to statute requires APA-compliant rulemaking or valid adjudicatory action. An executive order can direct agencies to begin those processes; it cannot itself achieve the substantive result. Where the order’s directives are read as accomplishing change directly — rather than initiating process — they exceed executive authority. Youngstown, 343 U.S. 579; APA 5 U.S.C. § 553; § 706.
Implementation Sequencing
Not all of EO 14394’s directives will produce effects on the same timeline. Readers asking “what will actually change, and when?” should expect roughly three tiers:
Near-term (0–6 months): The 60-day HUD best practices directive (Sec. 4a) is the order’s most time-bound provision — guidance is due by mid-May 2026. The Opportunity Zone alignment study (Sec. 5) will also produce a report in this window. These provisions are advisory in nature; their practical effect depends on whether states and localities adopt the guidance, which will vary significantly.
Medium-term (6 months–2+ years): The “revise and reform” directives to EPA, Army Corps, Commerce, HUD, Transportation, Agriculture, Energy, and FHFA will each proceed through agency-specific rulemaking processes. These require notice-and-comment under the APA, supporting technical records, and public comment periods. Meaningful regulatory change in the CWA stormwater and Section 404 permitting areas, energy efficiency standards, and housing finance rules will not take effect until rulemakings are completed — and will face legal challenge during that process.
Uncertain or blocked: The “maximally exempt” NEPA categorical exclusion expansion (Sec. 3a) and the “eliminate” energy efficiency standards directive (Sec. 2c) face the highest legal vulnerability. Litigation challenging these provisions is likely before they take full effect. The NEPA categorical exclusion expansion, in particular, cannot be achieved through guidance alone — it requires either rulemaking with supporting documentation or congressional action. For these provisions, the practical timeline is indeterminate.
The gap between the order’s signaling ambition and its implementable provisions is significant. The most binding directives address secondary drivers; the provisions addressing primary drivers are advisory; and the most aggressive directives face legal constraints that will delay or prevent implementation. The housing crisis timeline is not aligned with this sequencing.
Recommendations
The housing shortage is a genuine structural crisis. The goal of reducing regulatory friction is sound. The design of this order is not. This order is built to move fast at the signaling layer — it is not built to survive contact with the legal and administrative system it must operate through.
There is a structural pattern worth naming before the specific recommendations: this order systematically uses high-vulnerability verbs in exactly the places where durability matters most. “Eliminate” and “maximally exempt via guidance” are the two highest-risk verb patterns in executive rulemaking — the ones most likely to be struck down or reversed before they take effect. The order deploys both in its core environmental and energy provisions. Lower-vulnerability alternatives existed: “evaluate,” “initiate rulemaking to assess,” “study and report.” The choice of high-vulnerability verbs is not just a legal problem — it is a design problem. An order built for signals rather than durability will not solve a housing crisis that takes years to address.
What functional design would address:
Match verb choice to procedural posture. “Review” directives carry low legal risk and are not directly challengeable. “Revise” and “reform” require APA rulemaking with record support but are achievable. “Eliminate” where Congress has mandated a standard is not achievable by executive order, and “maximally exempt via guidance” invites immediate litigation. A well-designed order uses the highest-ambition verb that the underlying legal authority can actually support — then builds the rulemaking record to defend it. This order repeatedly skips that calibration.
Define “unduly burdensome” with operational criteria. Burden determinations should be tied to documented, quantifiable impacts — cost per unit, permitting timeline benchmarks, empirical data on delay. Without this, each of nine agencies makes an independent political judgment under a label that sounds technical but functions as a blank check.
Separate the federal layer from the local layer. This order correctly identifies that most housing barriers are local, but then attempts to address local policy through federal grant conditionality — a mechanism with significant constitutional constraints and a poor track record of durable local reform. A better design separates the federal regulatory reform (where executive authority is clearest) from the state/local reform strategy (which requires statutory authority, a longer-term mechanism, and likely congressional action to be durable). The graduated risk here is significant: best practices as pure guidance carry low legal risk; the same practices tied to large, entrenched transportation formula funds approach NFIB coercion territory.
NEPA reform requires statutory action, not guidance maximalism. Directing CEQ to “maximally exempt” housing from NEPA via categorical exclusions creates heightened litigation risk before most exclusions take effect, and cannot be achieved through guidance alone for new exclusion categories. Durable NEPA reform requires Congress. The executive branch can streamline existing categorical exclusions and initiate rulemaking for new ones with proper record support; it cannot exempt by fiat through guidance. Note: Congress is currently considering housing supply legislation that would address some of these issues through statutory change; a separate Church Bells brief on that legislation is forthcoming.
Add a reporting and accountability mechanism. Nine agencies, four regulatory regimes, one 60-day deadline, no unified reporting requirement, no success metrics, no lead coordinating authority. This order has no feedback loop. Without one, there is no way to distinguish between agencies that implemented and those that didn’t, or between interventions that reduced housing costs and those that didn’t. A functional version designates a coordinating authority, requires regular public reporting on implementation status, and defines measurable outcomes tied to housing production.
The 60-day best practices deadline should require notice-and-comment. Guidance developed in 60 days for all state and local governments, without public participation, will be less defensible, less durable, and less trusted than guidance developed through the standard process. Speed here is not the goal; effective, adoptable, legally defensible guidance is. A 60-day internal draft followed by a standard comment period is achievable and would produce a better product.