Unfunded Mandates Information and Transparency Act of 2017

Floor Speech

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Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of my amendment, which is offered in conjunction with the primary sponsor of H.R. 50, Representative Virginia Foxx, who I know has worked very hard on this legislation. I am glad that Ms. Foxx has embraced the amendment because it does improve the legislation.

The amendment would require the website post within 5 days of any consultations that an agency has with non-Federal parties during the development of regulatory proposals containing a significant Federal unfunded mandate, as well as the website posting of any comments submitted by non-Federal parties on such proposals within 5 days of their submission.

I am delighted that we have converged around this question of transparency in the regulatory process. Public rules should serve the public, so the public should know what the ingredients are, what the discussions are that are going into the preparation and the development of public regulations.

This is a consensus amendment, which is all about sunlight and scrutiny.

The idea of agency interaction with interested parties on Federal mandates is a good one. In this case, I only wish that the bill required far broader and more inclusive consultation.

As it stands in the legislation, early consultation is only required with affected ``parties within the private sector including small businesses'' and ``State, local, and Tribal governments,'' which are already covered under the Unfunded Mandate Reform Act.

The bill still operates in a slanted way. It does not require early consultations with representatives of other affected parties, like veterans, farmers, law enforcement officers, community associations, religious groups, and so on.

I have told the sponsor that I think it is a mistake to keep it this narrow, and I only wish the Rules Committee had, in its wisdom, accepted my second amendment so we could address that shortcoming. But having said that, I appreciate the strong incorporation of the language on transparency and disclosure, and I wish that, at least in the future, that we can be more flexible about placing all affected regulatory parties on the same plane.

I thank Representative Foxx for her support on this amendment, and I ask that all of my colleagues support it.

Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Connolly).

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Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chairman, I thank Mr. Connolly for those remarks. I agree with that. I think there was an opportunity here where we could have gotten the whole committee together, but the bill does remain way too narrow in terms of addressing just part of the affected regulatory community and not the rest of it, and there is no reason to do it like that.

Mr. Chairman, I am glad that we have an amendment on transparency in the process that takes place, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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