Searching for and Cutting Regulations That Are Unnecessarily Burdensome Act of 2015
Floor Speech
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I rise in opposition to H.R. 1155, the SCRUB Act, a one-way ratchet with the sole aim of prioritizing costs over benefits through the reckless elimination of rules without consideration of their benefit.
This legislation would shift the costs of rules from corporations to consumers, while posing substantial burdens and delays to agencies, thereby undermining public health and safety.
Title II of H.R. 1155 prohibits agencies from issuing a single new rule until the agency first offsets the cost of the new rule by repealing an existing rule specified by the commission. These regulatory CutGo provisions would apply to every new agency rule, no matter how important or pressing, for every regulatory agency.
For instance, any expert regulatory agency seeking to promulgate a new rule to safeguard vehicles from ignition switch failures, to keeping our water clean from chemical contamination, or to protect our hospitals in the event of an outbreak of an infectious disease would first have to eliminate an existing rule, which would trigger a new rulemaking process altogether to rescind that rule, causing years in delays.
Furthermore, title II lacks any mechanism for agencies to issue emergency rules that protect the public and environment from imminent harm. These procedures are dangerous and would tie the hands of agencies responding to public health crises requiring timely regulatory responses.
Additionally, agencies are unable to simply rescind rules. Instead, the APA requires that agencies follow the same notice and comment procedures to eliminate a rule as would be required to issue the same rule in the first place.
Thus, under the bill's requirements, prior to promulgating a new rule, agencies would likely need to prepare two sets of proposals: one for a new rule and one for eliminating an existing rule required by the commission through regulatory CutGo. This process may take anywhere from a few months to several years, especially when the underlying rule involves complex issues.
Lastly, the SCRUB Act is a dangerous solution in search of a problem. Each branch of government already conducts effective oversight through retrospective review of agency rules, narrowing the delegations of authority to agencies controlling agency appropriations and conducting oversight of agency activity.
Congress also has the specific authority under the Congressional Review Act to disapprove any rule that an agency proposes.
Rather than meaningfully streamlining the rulemaking process, regulatory CutGo would ossify the regulatory system by causing years of delay in the rulemaking process, creating additional layers and burdens in the regulatory system.
In total, the SCRUB Act would essentially function as a choke hold on Federal agency rulemaking; therefore, we should change the name of the SCRUB Act to the ``Scrooge Act.'' It delays any new action by an agency and drains agency resources and taxpayer dollars in a time of widespread budget austerity.
Lastly, I would comment that imposing the same regulatory burden on a dairy farmer as is imposed on an oil producer or an oil company sounds to me like the oil companies have been having a great day with the rules around here of late if they have got to do what we require a dairy farmer to do.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Peters).
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. I yield the gentleman an additional 15 seconds.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Chairman, it is clear that the driver of the SCRUB Act is not the dairy farmer, but it is the oil company and those as rich and powerful as those are.
So, in summary, H.R. 1155 is yet another antiregulatory bill on the big corporation wish list, saddling American taxpayers with a $30 million check for a bill that wouldn't create one job beyond the membership of the commission itself.
This bill has serious flaws, and I would urge my colleagues to reject it. Vote ``no'' on H.R. 1155.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, this amendment establishes additional criteria for the commission's one-sided review of all Federal regulations, authorizing it to identify rules for repeal that may limit or prohibit agencies from adopting technology to improve efficiency and effectiveness in order to lower regulatory costs.
Although this criteria, itself, may be unobjectionable on its face, it does nothing to change the commission's cost-only, deregulatory, and dangerous mandate under title I of H.R. 1155. Furthermore, rather than allowing agencies to modify or improve existing rules to accommodate for technological changes, this amendment would only create a basis for eliminating rules.
For instance, this amendment would authorize the commission to identify for elimination a rule protecting workers against discrimination, regardless of the rule's benefits, if the costs associated with the rule could be mitigated by adopting new technologies to improve efficiency. In other words, no matter how important and beneficial a rule prohibiting discrimination may be, it could be eliminated if the commission determines that it somehow encumbers agency efficiency. That is laughable.
As the administration notes in its Statement of Administration Policy, which threatens to veto this bill should it reach the President's desk, this bill lacks any ``mechanism for making thoughtful and modest modifications to rules to improve their implementation and enforcement,'' which is often the best course of action before we scuttle a rule or as we try to make the regulation work. Accordingly, I must oppose this amendment.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of my amendment.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, my amendment would strike title II of H.R. 1155, which would require agencies to undertake a regulatory CutGo process to repeal rules identified by the commission with little to no consideration of the rules' benefits prior to issuing the new rule.
These regulatory CutGo provisions would apply to every new agency rule, no matter how important or pressing, for every regulatory agency. Alarmingly, title II would also require agencies to undertake a notice and comment process for all rules eliminated through CutGo because, as I noted earlier, agencies are unable to simply rescind the rules. Thus, this bill would substantially delay or even prevent new regulations through this burdensome and time-consuming requirement.
As several of my colleagues' amendments demonstrate, the bill's regulatory CutGo procedures are unsafe, dangerous, and would tie the hands of agencies responding to public health crises requiring timely regulatory responses. In fact, this bill lacks any mechanism for consideration of public policy and safety, which would leave no option for agencies to issue emergency rules to protect the public and environment from imminent harm.
The bill's proponents claim that title I of H.R. 1155 would allow the commission to consider whether the costs of the bill are not justified by the benefit to society. As Professor Levin testified during the subcommittee's consideration of a previous version of this bill, the catchall language of subsection (h)(2)(I) would allow the commission to recommend the repeal of ``any rule promulgated by any agency if it deems the rule's requirements to be unnecessarily burdensome.'' In short, the commission would be completely free to disregard any benefit of the regulation by proceeding under this language or the bill's other advisory language.
Furthermore, H.R. 1155 is silent on what methodology the commission must follow, requiring only that it must have one, which leaves the window wide open for absolutely no consideration of the benefits of regulation.
While consideration of the cost of regulations is sometimes important, there is overwhelming consensus that the benefits of regulation vastly exceed the costs. In both the Republican and Democratic administrations, the benefits of our regulatory system of regulatory protections have made our country safer, stronger, healthier, and cleaner.
The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office has observed that these benefits ``include, among other things, ensuring that workplaces, air travel, foods, and drugs are safe; that the Nation's air, water, and land are not polluted; and that the appropriate amount of taxes is collected.''
The GAO reported in 2007 that while ``the costs of these regulations are estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars, the benefits estimates are even higher.'' In 2012, the Office of Management and Budget likewise concluded that even by conservative estimates, the benefits of major regulations exceeded the costs on a 2-to-1 basis over the past decade. Between fiscal years 1999 and 2009, the benefits of regulations produced a net benefit of $73 billion, vastly exceeding the regulations' costs.
This evidence overwhelmingly refutes the bald assertion that regulatory costs are burdensome, eliminate jobs, or harm our economic competitiveness.
I urge my colleagues to support my amendment, to oppose this misguided bill.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.
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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Mr. Chairman, I would just like to say how much I appreciate the gentleman from Florida's bipartisan work on this issue.
I look forward to working with the gentleman on this issue as well as other issues of joint concern, like criminal justice reform and the restoration of the Voting Rights Act.
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