Cramer: House Passes Legislation to Eliminate Needless and Burdensome Federal Rules and Regulations

Press Release

Congressman Kevin Cramer announced the U.S. House of Representatives passed a series of bills today designed to reduce and eliminate many outdated and needless federal regulations and frivolous lawsuits which hamper the American economy. Federal rulemaking is a mechanism through which the federal government implements policy, as Federal agencies issue regulations pursuant to statutory authority granted by Congress. According to the Office of Federal Register, between 2,500 and 4,500 final rules are published each year. According to some estimates, the total Federal regulatory burden has reached at least as high as $1.86 trillion per year, or approximately $15,000 per year per U.S. household. In 2015 alone, the U.S. government created 79,230 pages of new regulations in the federal register, with a total cost of $98.9 billion in regulatory costs.

H.R 1155, the Searching for and Cutting Regulations that are Unnecessarily Burdensome (SCRUB) Act of 2015 establishes a Retrospective Regulatory Review Commission to review existing federal regulations to identify and recommend to Congress regulations that should be repealed to reduce unnecessary regulatory costs to the U.S. economy. The bill authorizes $30 million to fund the Commission and sunsets its authorization the later of five and a half years after the bill's enactment or five years after the terms of all Commission members have commenced. The bill also requires agencies to review new major regulations within 10 years of their issuance in a manner substantially similar to the Commission review process established by the bill.

H.R. 712, the Sunshine for Regulatory Decrees and Settlements Act of 2015 limits the ability of defendant Federal regulators and pro-regulatory plaintiffs to use so-called sue-and-settle tactics. Such settlement agreements and consent decrees are used to create new regulations, reorder regulatory priorities, limit the authority of future administrations, and limit the rights to state and local co-regulators that are affected by the decrees and agreements. This bill also includes H.R. 1759, the ALERT Act of 2015, which requires agencies to provide detailed disclosures on regulations, and H.R. 690, the Providing Accountability through Transparency Act, to improve communication to the public regarding new Federal regulations.

"Overregulation and frivolous lawsuits are destroying the American economy." said Cramer. "For decades, unelected bureaucrats in our federal government have taken advantage of their authority by writing sweeping regulations based on growing interpretations of legislation passed in Congress. Instead of passing new job-killing regulations, we need to see what rules are already on the books and ask the simple question, "Are they needed anymore?' If they are duplicative and burdensome they should be repealed.

In 2014, federal agencies produced 3,554 final rules. In contrast, Congress passed and the President signed only 224 laws. "From Waters of the United States, Obamacare and Dodd-Frank, American businesses are drowning under the weight of new regulations," said Cramer. By 2014, the new regulations issued under President Obama filled 486,500 pages of the Federal Register. The Congressional Budget Office estimates over the last five years, the Obama Administration has issued 82 "major rules" each year.

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