Midnight Rules Relief Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Presidents from both parties have made a habit of midnight rules. And although here today we hear about 18 years of a deliberative process on beryllium, 18 years of consideration and it has to be passed in the last few days of a departing administration? What was the administration doing for 8 years? How deliberative can one be? The fact is these are not accidents. Midnight rules are, in fact, deliberately held to the end of an administration. That is the reason they are called midnight rules.

Now, having said that, the bill today, H.R. 5982, is not, in fact, about midnight rules. We already have legislation to take care of that.

What we don't have is an effective way to do it when we are dealing with, perhaps, 100, 120, 150, and, if not checked, perhaps more, in times to come, midnight rules from an outgoing administration.

We are talking today about the balance of power, about whether Congress should be efficient and effective in its ability to consider legislation. In this case, legislation done by the other branch, a branch not constitutionally allowed to do legislation. Let's remember, regulations are, in fact, a loan to the executive branch to clarify legislation done by this body.

If we believe that they do not fairly and appropriately interpret our legislation in their rulemaking, if we believe
they exceeded the authority or the meaning of the legislation, whether passed just a few days ago, a few years ago, or, in fact, a century ago, we have an obligation to bring up, consider, and respond. In fact, rulemaking, as we know it, is, in fact, something that if the gentleman, my colleague on the other side of the aisle, wanted to, he could bring up the regulation as a law and consider it in this body at any time.

I believe it is pretty clear that the objection in this case is an anticipated objection to the efficiency of being able to deal with one or two regulations at the end of a Presidency. We have an obligation to deal with all of them in a fair way.

Now, one thing that was missed in this is nothing in this legislation requires that we take them all up at the same time. In the next Congress, it certainly would be appropriate for Members who wanted to have longer debate to ask for longer debate on the overall vote, or, in fact, to break it into pieces and ask for that. That is true in this body and it is true in the other body. As a matter of fact, the other body hasn't even created rules yet and certainly could create rules that would define further debate on midnight rules.

So I think today what we are really talking about is: Will Congress live up to its responsibility to the American people to, in fact, be the bastion of law creation, whether laws are created by this body directly or in the review of regulations created by an administration on behalf of this body? Ultimately, we own responsibility for laws and regulations, whether they work or don't work.

Lastly, this body has not done nearly enough to review regulations and their effect. During my tenure on another committee, over and over again I saw regulations by both administrations I have served under to create regulations that they said would cost little or nothing. By the time they come to pass, we discover they almost inevitably have a greater impact to our economy, adverse impact in many cases, than forecasted. That review is another area that we should do.

But for today, this simple piece of legislation is only asking that Congress live up to its responsibility and do so in a way that would not tie up weeks or months of either body simply to decide that a regulation needs to be sent back for further review and, perhaps, reissued in a fashion more consistent with the laws created by this body and signed by previous Presidents.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. Chairman, I was rather surprised at my colleague from Georgia (Mr. Johnson).

Since I am the author of the bill, I would say that for the 16 years I have been in Congress, I have been deliberating this piece of legislation, so it certainly is not new.

In much more seriousness, to call this not regular order is simply inaccurate. This has been discussed in multiple hearings, and it went through regular order with a full committee markup. So I would hope that the gentleman would reevaluate his words and recognize that half- baked would be inappropriate. This was fully vetted, and he had time for all the amendments we are hearing today at the time it was in committee.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. It carves out rules pertaining to critical matters of national security.

As we know, with President Obama, President-elect Trump, and any other President, they have huge powers of executive authority when it comes to national security. So to exclude something under the guise that it would be national security would inherently undermine the intent of the rule.

I always find it interesting that people internalize and personalize something. In this case, there is nothing better that this President could do for the American people--and perhaps for regulations that he would oppose in the future--than to sign this legislation. The fact is President Obama likely objects to many of the regulations that would come out of the new Trump administration.

There is no better time than now to reassert or allow to be reasserted the power of a Congress, a Congress that might very well reject President-elect Trump's legislation or regulations in the future.

So the reality is, although the gentlewoman from Texas would have you believe that this was a personal attack on our President, it is not an attack on our President. It is not an attack on our next President.
It is, in fact, a law that would allow Congress to reassert, in an efficient way, the authority which is constitutionally, inherently, and always ours.

For decades, perhaps two centuries plus, we have yielded the power, the right, and the responsibility of this body in appropriations, in regulations, and even in spending of a number of areas in taxation to the executive branch. We can yield to the executive branch, but we cannot run away from our responsibility. A regulation--ten regulations, a hundred regulations, or a thousand regulations that are disapproved by the American people and, from them through us, needs to be dealt with in an efficient fashion.

So do I disagree with this? Yes. Sadly, I disagree with the gentlewoman from Texas' characterization of the nature of this legislation. This legislation does not expire a few weeks or months from now, and it is intended to go on.

Lastly, to say we have already passed legislation in this Congress would imply that it was run through the Senate and signed by the President and, as a result, the reform is in place. No such thing is the case.
I would offer the gentlewoman from Texas in the next Congress to work with her on such legislation as would be signed by the next President.

I reserve the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. Chairman, in closing, I have served in this body for almost exactly 16 years; and I have observed the extremely rare times that a resolution of disapproval comes to this body. So I think if we can set a tone for the remainder of the debate, the tone should be set in recognition that these resolutions are rare. And they never--I repeat, never in my 16 years--and the gentlewoman and I have served a similar time--never have I seen one that is as well-founded as dealing with the safety of potentially explosives. Those kinds of regulations are routinely run through fairly quickly with congressional oversight and encouragement.

So I think we have to set the tone and ask how many times--Ranking Member Conyers has served longer than anyone in this room--how many times have we brought these up. The fact is, even under this en bloc, it will be a small portion of those regulations created in the last days of an outgoing administration.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. Chairman, on this en bloc pair of amendments, I have two very different reasons for objecting. In the case of the portion that is the Director of Office of Management and Budget, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Connolly) and I spent an amazing amount of time over the years looking at times in which OMB makes an estimate and then the reality is dramatically different.

So to carve out based on the Office of Management and Budget, which is a Cabinet-level, partisan appointment of the President, would have one believe that it is perfect. The reality is not only is it not perfect, but its track record tends to be very self-serving. Just the amount of times in which CBO scores very differently would cause all of us to know that this is not a good enough reason for a carve-out.

Having said that, I look forward to working with the gentleman from Virginia on both CBO and OMB scoring reform in the next Congress because I think we have a long way to go to get numbers right. If we get numbers right on both regulations and proposed laws, we can all do a better job.

In the case of the second portion of these two, I have to say that climate change has been unfairly made a political issue. The world is getting warmer; we know that. How much of it is caused by various things, we need to know, and I would hope that regulations would not be a source of that. But this President has, by many of his own statements, taken great credit for his use of a pen and a phone to make decisions related to his view of a single cause of climate change, that being carbon.

The fact is I look forward to working with any President on sensible regulations, but those regulations have to be consistent with the laws passed and the regulatory options given to the other branch. It is for that reason that we have the ability to disapprove.

So again, I would hope we all not look at specific regulations that may or may not be contested by the next Congress and, instead, look more appropriately at should we have the efficiency to consider maybe 20, maybe 10, maybe only 4 en bloc, all as one, or maybe in two separate. The reality is efficiency of the process of disapproval does not for a moment change the responsibility and authority of this body.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

I won't use it all. I thank the chairman, and I thank my colleague from Virginia. Let me take a moment to reflect, perhaps, on something that my colleague and friend said.

During my tenure with Mr. Connolly, our committee sent 23 pieces of legislation to the President that he signed; we sent 74 to the other body. So if there is an enemy, perhaps it is the great bipartisan legislation that left the House and never got to the President. The President signed all 23 pieces of legislation, though, that got through the Senate, including legislation that Mr. Connolly and I worked on together.

Since my leaving that committee, additional legislation has come through that committee on a bipartisan basis, including a huge expansion of the Freedom of Information Act. I would hope that in these last days, we would reflect on the successes of this Congress and the successes of our outgoing President because, in fact, for all that we all do in the performance of our oversight role, we also have had fine and notable successes and good legislation under this President; and I would like to take this moment to take note that, in fact, the President has signed the vast majority of legislation that left here on a bipartisan basis, including a piece of legislation that Mr. Connolly was critical on.

I yield to the gentleman if he has any further comment.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source