Scrub Act

Floor Speech

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Mrs. ERNST. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the Searching for and Cutting Regulations that are Unnecessarily Burdensome Act--more affectionately known as the SCRUB Act. This past summer, my colleague Senator Hatch and I introduced this legislation to help free American families and small businesses from the unnecessary burdens of our regulatory system. I am pleased to mention that the bill passed the House last week on a bipartisan basis.

For too long, our Nation's innovators and employers have been trying to comply with a swath of outdated, duplicative, or obsolete regulations that hamper their growth and creativity. Many of these regulations also come with stacks of paperwork requirements that force our small businesses to spend time on filling in the blanks rather than filling in jobs. The SCRUB Act would peel back these types of regulations so our businesses can focus on doing what they know best: innovating and creating jobs.

The purpose of this bill is to take an objective and in-depth look at major regulations that are at least 15 years old and could be repealed because they have, No. 1, achieved their goal and there is no threat to the problem reoccurring; No. 2, technology or market changes have made the regulation unnecessary; or No. 3, they are ineffective or overlap with other Federal or State regulations.

For decades, lawmakers and Presidents on both sides of the aisle have recognized the need to unleash our small businesses and job creators from rules and regulations that don't make sense. When new rules are proposed, there is very little, if any, attention paid to how the new rule will work with the hundreds of other rules that came before it. This buildup of rules is a cumulative burden on our businesses which ultimately slows job growth and hits families even harder who are already struggling to make ends meet. In fact, according to one study, if the cost of all of these regulations was considered in an independent country--all of the costs of these rules and regulations-- it would be about the 10th largest economy in the world.

Let's face it: The more expensive it becomes to make a product or deliver a service, the more money the consumer will have to dig out of their own pockets to pay for it. It is those families who are working multiple jobs to provide for their kids who are going to be hit the hardest.

This bill is how we start to solve that problem. The SCRUB Act establishes a bipartisan, blue ribbon commission to give a fair and thoughtful review of our Nation's existing regulations. Once the commission is finished with their review, they would provide recommendations to Congress and we would have an opportunity to vote on them.

If an agency wants to impose a new regulation, they can do that under the SCRUB Act, but they would have to offset the cost of that new regulation by repealing an existing one that is of equal cost and has been deemed unnecessary or outdated by the commission.

I know Iowa families do this. They know how to prioritize. Why can't our Federal agencies? We simply cannot allow the buildup of unnecessary and costly regulations over time.

I will end with just one last comment. Rules and regulations often have unintended consequences. It is our responsibility as lawmakers to not only recognize when this happens but to then proactively fix it.

The SCRUB Act is a commonsense solution that forces lawmakers and our agencies to be honest about their regulatory system by fixing the rules that need fixing and dropping those that have outlived their useful purpose.

I thank Senator Hatch for his leadership on this, and I urge all of my colleagues to support this legislation.

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