Regulatory Integrity Act of 2016

Floor Speech

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Ms. PLASKETT. Mr. Chairman, I thank my colleague from Missouri.

Mr. Chairman, H.R. 5226, the Regulatory Integrity Act of 2016, would, we believe, impose duplicative and unnecessary procedural requirements on agencies that would prevent them from efficiently performing their statutory responsibilities and could potentially lead to a less informed public due to the nature of the communication that is requested or not to be requested by this bill. Additionally, Mr. Chairman, these duplicative services will be costly to the American taxpayer.

While we agree that some increased transparency should be considered, this bill actually grinds regulatory processes and has an onerous and chilling reporting requirement to it. The bill increases bureaucratic red tape my Republican colleagues purport to be the problem with government and creates additional oversight by the Federal Government on agencies. We do have the ability to keep agencies from what their rulemaking is through our own appropriation of those agencies and what they do.

If that isn't reason enough not to support this legislation, its added costs to the American taxpayers should do the job. The separate tracking and reporting of agency communications as prescribed by the bill is unnecessary and extremely burdensome and provides little to no value while diverting agency resources from the important priorities and work that the agencies with limited resources as it is are supposed to carry out.

This bill is designed for the majority to more easily combat agency actions that they disagree with.

Mr. Chairman, there are more urgent matters that we need to be taking up at this time that need our immediate attention: the Zika virus, the Flint water crisis, gun violence, and the heroin and opiate crisis that are going on right now. This is really unnecessary time that this Congress should be taking, and we believe that this should be struck down by this Congress.

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Ms. PLASKETT. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

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Ms. PLASKETT. Mr. Chairman, I respectfully submit that this amendment is simple, but it is simply another excuse for Members on the other side to talk about emails. I believe that the issue that my colleague is attempting to address has already been addressed when, in 2014, President Obama signed into law the Presidential and Federal Records Act Amendments.

That legislation was sponsored by the ranking member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Elijah Cummings, and it added into law, for the first time, a specific requirement for Federal employees who use personal email accounts. That law now requires Federal employees, if they create a Federal or Presidential record using a personal email account, to forward a copy of the email to their official account within 20 days of that email.

This amendment would create a unique requirement for emails about rulemaking. I agree that employees should use their government email accounts whenever possible, but this bill is not the place to make new rules about Federal records. I--and I hope my colleagues--will oppose this amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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